Can a Person Get Hurt While Performing a Good Deed? (Includes a Review on World Events)

Good evening. Baruch Hashem. This lecture will be, eh, the, the Fuat Jason Michael Bentali The B'ryut of Vata Nefesh of Vata Ruach of Shmuel ben Tamanya and Hannah Batyonah. And the Yehudi Shmat Pinchas ben Chana, the Yehudi Shmat Nathan ben Ruth. Okay, hope I covered everyone. I always mess up. And today they announced that there are more than 5 million dead from COVID in the world. 5 million people died. In a world of close to 8 billion people, 5 million is not the percent of a percent. It's not a small number. But we actually focus on 5 million bodies. It's crazy just to think about it. Millions of people. And in Israel, about 8,000 of them were Israelis from these 5 million. And few thousands that passed here in America and few thousands that passed also in Europe. So even among us, it's thousands of thousands of deaths, unfortunately. The good news is that 3 months ago, there was another wave in Israel started. Third one, and they gave the booster shot, and it was reduced almost zero now. Just like the first and the second wave, they gave the shots. First wave, there was no shots yet, thousands of people died, and eventually it went down. Second wave, quickly they gave the shots, within a month basically it stopped. Now when it started again, They gave the booster and it stopped almost completely. This time faster than the previous time. The arguments about vaccines will remain and continue. A big doctor in Monsey on Motzi Shabbos, after Shabbat, when we came out of the shul, a famous doctor for 40 years at least, I told him that you've been giving a lot of those vaccines to, I'm sure, to hundreds of your patients. He corrected me, said thousands, many thousands. You know, and I said to him, did you have any complication, any problem? Anyone fainted, had heart problems, anything like that? He told me no, not at all. Nobody had any problems. From thousands of people. But he told me that those who take Johnson Johnson should take their children aspirin for 2 weeks. Why? There was few incidents in the world that people had blood clots from that. So if they take this aspirin, there's no problem whatsoever. But the Pfizer and Moderna, he did not have one incident from thousands of people. And his son was standing next to him and he also got it. He got it, the doctor himself. Of course, if you're gonna speak to all the YouTube experts, they're gonna find you thousands of problems. They create problems, they make problems, they love conspiracy. So, he told me, by the way, that he's been giving other shots as well because he's a doctor for so many years. He said this is not only when it comes to COVID, the same thing was with the polio and other vaccine shots. These arguments is endless and is forever. It's always going to come back. Every vaccine they will ever give, it will always be the same. But he told me the only difference now that we have the media, which you didn't have back then, so There was not that much noise back then because people there could not communicate with each other online. Now you hear it everywhere, but it was the same thing. Those who pro-vaccine and those who are giving their life to fight. The one thing I want to tell you, when you find a person that leaves everything he does, he doesn't learn Torah anymore, he doesn't do anything anymore, all he does all day sits on the internet and fights people against the vaccine. What does it tell you? Person that was yeresh amayim, shomer mitzvot, all of a sudden nothing, nothing else matters. He gives his life just to fight and fight all day non-stop, sending videos, threatening people. It comes to violence also. Some people in Israel from the government needed bodyguards because they threaten them. To murder them. You know, they get called by names, Hitler, this, that. I don't have to tell you the violence of the people today. But it continues, it continues. I myself get so many of those nonsense messages. Of course, I don't open one of them even. Immediately I delete it. I'm not wasting a second on it. But just to show you that this argument will remain. Those who are pro, they will stay pro, and those who are against, probably will stay against, and that's it. No point of wasting time on it. There's something interesting today. They announced a week ago in Israel that this stupid wicked government that we have now for months already— who would believe that they will remain already 4 or 5 months? It's a disaster. They approved a budget of $12 million to the street cats. That's what they have in mind. To give a penny for Torah, they don't want. To give money to synagogues, they don't want. To help poor religious kids that are dying, that don't have a piece of bread to eat, They don't want. To give 12 million shekels to cats on the street, in one second they approve, these leftists. Just to show you who we're dealing with here. They gave 53 billion shekels to the Muslim Brothers who works together with Hamas. Yesterday they had an article, there's one reporter, she's actually objective. The only one. Cannot find good reporters today. She actually brought a video that the head of the Hamas in Israel is thanking the head of the Muslim Brothers for all the help they gave the Hamas. So Hamas is a terror organization who calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Israelis, received 30 billion shekels from the 53 billion shekels from the Muslim brothers. Meaning, the Israeli stupid government, in order for them to form a government, they needed the 4 Arabs that sits in the Knesset. 4. 4 out of 120. So they bribed them by giving them 53 billion shekels, which 30 of that went to the Hamas. That will be thousands of Israelis that will die in the next year or two from these 30 billion shekels. They all goes to terror. You know, for everything you need money. You need money to save souls. Billion or billion? Billion, billion. 53 billion shekel. Like $20 billion? Yes, $20 billion almost. And 30 billion shekel, which is almost 10 billion shekel almost, $10 billion, I'm sorry, went to the Hamas. And they exposed that. And one guy asked him, why the Hamas has to thank you? He said, no, we're giving money to the orphans of Gaza. What do we care about Gaza now? We are the State of Israel. Gaza is our enemies. Imagine they say, well, we can send money to Iran. Iran is working on a bomb to drop it on our heads. We have to take care of their people. Of course they never gave it to any orphans. It's obviously a lie. The idea is that they're not denying that they gave $30 billion to the Hamas, to Gaza. I want to tell you something. If you have a nonprofit organization in a specific country and you collect money from people and you give it to different countries against the law, even here in America, if you collect money here, let's say you're an Arab here, you collect money from Arabs here in New York and you send the money to a different country, check it out, it's against the law. But in Israel, the law is only a recommendation. So that's really what's happening. Rabotai, we are now in the middle, in the middle of a very dangerous time financially. The inflation is crazy. Every hour prices are keep going higher and higher. You cannot find cars. Cars that used to be $200, $300 now are more than double a year or two later. Insurance is double or triple. The insurance company take advantage on the situation. I give you an example. If you want to insure a car on a 26-year-old guy that drives already for 10 years with no incident, with 10 years of experience, he knows how to drive, you're gonna pay 4 times more than a person that is 55 or 60. 4 times more. You ask them, what is the logic here? There's a 10-year-old driver and a 30-year-old driver. Why do you have to pay over here instead of $100 a month, $400 a month? They begin with all the nonsense. No, there's other factors. Nonsense. All lies. They kill you. They take advantage of it. They know these young people, there's nothing they can do. The prices of food are double. What used to be 3, it's 6 now. What used to be 10, it's 20. In Israel, they say that they are in the middle of a very serious inflation. Some of the items were increased in few months by 70%. This is almost double. The people of America do not make double than a year ago. One of the reasons why all the prices are up is because a lot of those boats, the imports, are stuck in the middle of the ocean. There are no people to bring all the loads. Into the port. So they are, they are stuck. You have huge boats with hundreds of tons of things, cans and food and electronic and chips for cars and all these things, and they cannot, they cannot get to the port because no, there's nobody there to take the loads down. And why is it? Because half of the people were fired because they don't want to take the vaccine. So if you had 3,000 workers, now you have 1,500 or 2,000 instead of 3,000. Don't have people. In hospitals, they're firing a lot of people as of this— as of today or yesterday. That's it. A lot of people have to quit their job. Plus, because of the corona, all these companies that make chips for cars, they make enough cheap. So they use it now for iPhone 13. That's more urgent now to have cows. Can't get cows. Everything became so crazy. I'm thinking to myself, what's going to be with all the middle class in America? People who make $50,000, $60,000 a year, they have a family. With the prices of— the increase of the prices now, these people will become homeless. I don't know what's gonna be. We will have to wait and see what's gonna happen. Usually, from my experience, when prices go up, most of the time they never go back down again. They just remain where they are. Because even if the cost of the merchants has become lower eventually, they keep the high price. They do not lower it. With gas prices, they bring it up and down depending on the market because people know how much a barrel of oil costs. You cannot fool them. For instance, if somebody buys a watch and the store pays, for instance, $20,000 for it and they sell it to you for $40,000, if next month they're gonna pay only $10,000, they will still sell it to you for $40,000 because you have no idea what they pay for it. That's the human nature. Don't expect honesty of it. So it is what it is, Rabotai, that's it. We have a situation. I actually had a case 2 weeks ago of a guy. Somebody owed him $13,000 for years. Doesn't pay him. All of a sudden he calls in 2 weeks ago. Listen, I'm so sorry. I've been stalling you for so long. I didn't pay you. I cannot pay you really money, but I have a Rolex watch. I can give it to you. I owned it a month ago for $12,500. I can show you the receipt and the papers. Now it's worth $15,000. You can sell it now for $15,000. In a month or two, it went up to $15,000. It's like 17% increase in a month. Expensive watches go very, very expensive now. Why is it? The world is in a crisis and there's inflation and there's a bad economy and there's gonna be millions of foreclosures on homes now. There's gonna be a lot of riots coming up. Why would people pay double on a Rolex? Or all these watches? I was wondering. Well, usually when business is bad and people, they hold to their money. They don't wanna go and spend on luxury things. But one guy that is a watch dealer, he told me the secret. He told me because there's nothing that has value and keeps its value right now. Everything you buy, the value can go down. So the easiest thing is to buy jewelry and watches. You buy the watch, it either remains the same or go higher. So people buy it to hold where they— if they need to take money from one place to another, how they're going to take the money? You cannot transfer money. In Israel, they passed a law a year ago that you cannot do any transactions in cash more than 11,000 shekels, which at that time was $3,000. You cannot do a cash transaction. It's against the law. If you're gonna sell something and someone will pay you more than $3,000 in cash, the government is after you. Now they lowered it to 6,000, $2,000. The dollar crashed from 4 shekels to a dollar to 3.11. 25% almost reduction in a dollar, 25%. You know what it means? I tell you what it means. That when you send $500 to a poor guy who sits and learning in shiva ulman, It used to be 2,000 shekels. Now it's only 1,500 shekels, 25% less. As it is, it's a poverty salary. Now you get 25% less. It's not one guy, it's tens of thousands of guys. The yeshiva has to get this, this difference. They have to now get 25% more money to pay those people. But there is a bigger problem because even if you really get it, meaning the rich people of America will agree to give more than what they normally give. You call each one of them, "Listen, you give $10,000 every month, please give $12,000." "Fine." "You give $20,000, please give $24,000." "Fine." So you close the gap. The problem is that it's still not enough because the prices of everything became double. Do you understand what happened? 2 years ago, 2,000 shekels, you can buy a few things. It became 1,500 shekels. And now you cannot buy anything because everything else costs double. Everything costs double. So, I don't know, I really, when I think about it, the Israeli government are in a catch-22. They have big inflation, so they have to increase the interest rate on the shekel. But if they'll do it, the dollar will crash to 2 shekels. If the dollar will crash to 2 shekels, all the exports of Israel will die out. They won't export oranges and peppers and electronics and all the chips that they have, Intel, everything is made in Israel. And all these advanced artificial intelligence things and weapons and missiles and who knows what. A lot of exports from Israel. Diamonds. Everything will die out. Half of the people of Israel are living from exports. So it's a situation means that no matter what you're gonna do, you lose. It's the worst. You raise the interest rate, the dollar will crash even more. You don't raise it, inflation will continue and prices will keep going higher and higher and people will become poor. So you don't know what to do. They don't know what to do. Israeli Oh, by the way, you should know, the hardest thing after Torah, to understand Torah is very difficult, Gemara, Talmud, very complicated. You really need a sharp head with good memory and to observe the small details. And there's thousands of small details that one of them can change the whole picture. So you need to have a really super good brain. But there is one more thing that's very difficult to understand is economy. To be an economist. Because it's so complicated, every economist says something different. Listen to them. This world expert says one thing, the next world expert says something completely different. Why? I really don't blame them because there are so many factors here and you have to compare if we do it like this way and this way and that way. And of course, in the end, it's all from Hashem. If Hashem wants people in the world to become poor, if he wants riots, if he wants people killing each other on the street for food, if he wants more robberies, if he wants to intimidate all the wicked people, that's what he does. If he wants prosperity and nice and everyone lives comfortable and make money and happy and not pressure, that's what he does. It's up to him in the end. All these thousands of factors In the end Hashem pulled the strings. We think that we do. In 2008, there was a Bernanke, Ben Bernanke, remember him? He was an Orthodox Jew actually. Shomer Shabbat. Shabbat he puts a hat, goes to shul. Orthodox. Technically, he saved America from total bankruptcy and chaos. 2008, they're lucky that he was in power. If he wasn't in power with all the money and the stock market and all that, this country would be finished by now. Of course, nobody will ever give him the credit. They already forgot about him. Of course, it's all from Hashem. Hashem put that Jew in the right place in the right time, and he made a good decision, and he actually saved 19 banks. All the banks were on the way to go bankrupt, all of them. There would not be banking system in America. You wouldn't be able to get your money. The bank will eat your money. They're all bankrupt, that's it. FDIC used to cover up to $100,000 a person. There's a lot of millionaires and billionaires. They would lose all their money. Someone has a billion dollars in banks, the money will be wiped out. First of all, it will take him 20 years to get his $100,000 from the government because the government is bankrupt. So this FBI, she would be nothing. Now, he was a very smart person. Right away printed billions of dollars and gave it to the bank and forced one bank to buy the other and save the economic system. 2008, we were very, very close for a complete chaos and civil war and a disaster and poverty. It doesn't mean it won't happen now. Remember, now it's the Shnat Shmita. Eve of Shmita is always a disaster. I once put in my WhatsApp groups the history of all the Shnat Shmita of the last 100 years. Every 7 years, serious judgment. I actually told it to the guy in the back, not joke. I told him, you are in charge of all the investments in the bank here. I'm preparing you. Next month there will be a Jewish matzmitah. What's that, Rabbi? Gives a lot of respect, this goy. So I say to him, that's what happens every 7 years. And now we already adopted this term. He said, Rabbi, you know you have no idea. Why? Judgment on the world. On Shabbat Baruch Hashem, we had Parasha Chayei Sarah. Why do you call it Parasha Chayei Sarah and not Parasha of Shepas? Should have called the Parasha Motsarah, the death of Sarah. Right? When someone died in a chapter of a book, you have a book, you have 24 chapters. One of them describes about the death of one of the heroes of the story. How would you title the chapter? The death of Alex, whatever his name is, the hero. You don't write the life of him. Because in the life of the secular people, you only live as long as you can walk and talk. You can move. Once you die, meaning the body dies, for them it's dead. That's it. They don't believe in afterlife and the existence of the soul. They don't think about it. They see a person is laying down and he's finished his walking on the materialistic world. That second for them is history. He will be covered with sand and it's over. But the Torah says that the real life begins right now. Till now, it was a combination of body and soul. Now everything will begin. You go up to the eternal world. Now you have to pay for what you did. If you did something wrong, you have to deal with that. If you did something right, you're gonna have to get your benefits for it. So in the Torah, every time someone passed, they call it "chaiyei," the life of. Meaning his life really begins right now. Until now, he was in the process of dying. Because when the minute he was born to the world as a baby, now he has, let's say, 80 years. Every second that passed takes away from his battery. So what are you saying? My battery is alive or my battery is dying? If you have 5% and another minute it's 4% and another minute it's 2%. So what are you saying to the person? Hurry up, my battery is dying. Why? The body is dying. Your time in this world is dying, but the soul will remain forever. So the life of Sarah, Ha'Esav, this parasha is the 5th parasha of Sefer Bereshit, right? The 5th one. Also parasha 23. Vayechi Yaakov speaks about the death of Yaakov. Why do we speak when Yaakov lived? It's past now. No, the past of the righteous people is actually the beginning of their life. We know that the Gemara says that in Megillat Kohelet chapter 1 It's written over there, "Vezarah Hashem Esh Uva." Mazeh Uva? Vezarah Hashem Esh, Uva Hashem Esh. Zarah Hashem Esh, the sun is shining. Uva Hashem Esh, the sun is going down. Right? Don't we know that? We need the Torah to tell us that the sun goes up and the sun goes down? Every fool knows it. What do you need to even waste a line in a midrash kohelet about it? Of course, it doesn't speak about the actual sun. What it speaks about is when there is a big righteous person that thanks to him there are many good things happening in the world and it's time to go, he is, Hashem immediately replace him with another righteous person. This will go on until the time of Mashiach. Once Sarah is going to the next world, who is going to take her place? Immediately Rivka. Now, Rivka takes place. Rivka is in charge, right? Sarah passed, Rivka comes. And Moshe passed, who took his place? Yehoshua, right? So when Yehoshua passed, who took everything in power? Admiel ben Knaz. He was the first judge of all the judges, right? And, you know, when Eli, in the time of Shmuel, Shmuel Samuel, the prophet, Right? So when Eli passed, who took his place? Shmuel passed. So always a legendary person leaves and someone else goes into his shoes, into his place. Right? Immediately after Sarah passed, what do you read? "Uvetoel." Same time. "Yalat et Rivka." Rivka is taking place, taking over. Right? In this Midrash, they give all kinds of examples that HaKadosh Baruch Hu obviously supervises every little detail in His nation. So before the leader leaves, He already prepares the new leader to go into power. In the Aftarah that we read on Shabbat, David HaMelech is 70 years old. 7 years old, and he's about to die. He's laying in bed, in bad condition, critical condition, and he's freezing. They cover him with blankets, everything, he's freezing. When a person cannot warm up, you know, one of the things they teach you if you're in a tzadda and you walk in places with ice and snow, that sometimes the only way to save a person's life is to take off the clothes, both of you, and you, with the heat of your body, once you hug him, the heat of the body can save his life. Nothing else can save the life. It will take too long until you put blankets and everything. The heat of the body is the— of course, if you have fire, it's better. If you don't have fire, you are stuck in a in the snow. It's known, it's a known thing. Everyone who is a paramedic or whatever, they'll tell you the heat of the body, it's a stranger. The only way is to save them is with heat body to body. So when they see nothing helps, they need now to find him someone to hug him. So what they're gonna do, they find a young girl, young girl that she will be his concubine, meaning almost like a wife. And she comes and she tried to warm him up and his mamash in the last days of his life. And now what happened, he has a son. One of his wives was a convert, Eshet Gefatorah. This convert gave him birth to two sons. One was a cholero, one. His name was Avshalom. It's a very bad name to call your children Avshalom after this Rasha. Avshalom actually gave David a meler, a hell in his lifetime. What he did to his father, it's beyond words. And then he had a brother, his name was Adonia, Adonia, or Adonia, or some Sometimes it's written Adonia, sometimes it's written Adoniau. Sometimes it's written Yishaya, sometimes it's written Yishayau. Sometimes it's written Yirmiyahu, sometimes it's written Yirmiyahu. In English they change it. Yirmiyahu, Jeremiah. Yishaya, Isaiah. Yoel, Joel. Amos, Amos. You know, all the other prophets. Moshe, Moses, you know, names are similar but not always. Hoshea, it's, I think, Hosea, if I'm not mistaken. And Malachi is Malachi, right? Zechariah, it's Zachary. The names are very similar. In Arabic, it's Zechariah. Also very similar, right? Abraham, Ibrahim. David, Dawud. Yitzhak, Yasar. Yaakov, Ya'akub. Moshe, Musa. Similar names. Going to know how to pronounce the Hebrew words authentically throughout the generations. The language actually changed the pronunciation. But this Adonia took advantage of the situation. He took advantage of the situation. He sees that his father cannot function right now. And there are some leaders and rabbis and the chief of command of the army. So he decides to nominate himself as the new king. He did not wait for his father to nominate the king. He already made a big party and announced his election. You know how the politicians— it happened one time in Israel that the leftists, they're already sure based on their survey that they won the election. So they were so happy at night and all the People from the right went to sleep so depressed. I'll never forget it. In the morning, everyone in Israel woke up after they already announced that the leftists took the government. In the morning, the headline was, "Ma'apach!" "Revolution!" "Shimon Peres lost. Bibi took over." You had to see their face. How they were going crazy, these leftists. So now he decided, I'm the new king. He made himself a carriage with horses. He goes everywhere. The people remember, there's no media, no news. People hear on the streets, oh, did you hear? There's a new king. Who? The son of David. Who? Adonia. Who was the prophet? Nathan. Nathan was the prophet. When he heard that, wow, so how can it be? King David promised to Bathsheba, the righteous wife, she was his richiduch, that her son will take his place. Who is her son? Shlomo, Solomon. In Arabic, Salman. Salmán, right? But Salmán Rushdie. What's his name in Hebrew? Huh? Shlomo Rushdie. He doesn't know it, but that's his name. Okay, so Shlomo is only 12 years old. The prophet heard that, he runs quickly to Batshevat. Do you hear what happened? This Adonijah already nominated himself as a king and some of the assistants of King David are already taking his side. Politics! He has the power, we better be nice to him if we want to continue to stay in power. You know how it is. Right away, when Trump lost, his vice president and also this woman Nikki Haley stuck a knife in his back, but they didn't do it until they were sure that it's finished. As long as it wasn't finished, they still put the show. As soon as they realized it finished, they did not want to do any— they did not want to have anything to do with it. Why? To protect their future career. In the end, everybody thinks about himself, not about the truth, right? That's how politics is. So what happened over here? He comes to Bathsheba and says, "You better wake up before it's too late. If David will pass, that's the end of it. Run quickly and complain to him that he's stealing the kingdom. And while you are doing that, I will walk in and support your words." That's what saved the Jewish nation. That's how King Solomon went into power. She came and said to him, "Adonia Melech." Your Majesty, didn't your Majesty promise his servant? She's his wife, his shidduch. She speaks with a lot of respect. She said to him, didn't you promise your servant that my child will be the king after you? As she does it, the prophet Nathan came door to door and he said the same thing. How can it be? Adonia is already the And David swore that he's gonna keep his word and Shlomo will be the king. It's very interesting. As wicked as this Adonia was, his father is dying, the last thing he cared about is his father. All he cared about is to be the new king. Once David said Shlomo will be the king, that was the end of the story. He gave up. Today, it will be revolution. Civil war. What? He's 12 years old, he's going to be the king? No, I'm going to be the king. We wait until he'll be 18 and then he can come. Until then, we will make a rotation. I'll be the king. I'm older, I'm strong, I'm also the son of the king, Ushu. But your father say that Shlomo is the king. Oh yeah? Sorry. End of story. The wicked of back then didn't have so much arrogance like today. Today what son will agree? You know what? You don't have to believe me. If you know a little bit about what happened in the Hasidic world, every time a big Rebbe passed, not every time, but many times that a big Rebbe passed and he has two sons and both of them wants to be be the new rebbe at the moment. And World War III begins, or World War 30 begins, right away. And what happened to the community? Some support A, some support B. Bobov I, Bobov II, Satmar I, Satmar II, Lishnitz I, Lishnitz II, etc., etc. Why? Instead of someone saying, what does my father want? What did he write in his will? Who is going to be the new Rebbe? That's it. But you're a new Rebbe of Torani, but my father decided that my young brother will be the leader. No, war. Sometimes you go to court, secular Jewish court. But there is only one difference between today and back then. Today, being a leader, it's not only the prestige and controlling and making everyone follow your opinion and follow your Torah and follow your knowledge. It's billions of dollars. Big money. It's buildings. It's big yeshivot. Each building, $20 million, $30 million. 30 million, 50 million, 100 million, depending on the location. It's an empire of money. One person once told me, from a different country, not in America, about a big Rebbe, a big tzaddik. The people donated so much money to him, he built a very, very fancy building, and he told me, "Valtek yoved erlad is no minyan." But if you see how fancy the building is, you're not gonna believe it. There's no nothing people, don't even know. Huge place, very expensive, all nice marble, chandeliers, many rooms, big hall. Besides holidays that people come, during the day is basically no use for it. Sometimes some shuls have big mazal, like for instance, In Eretz Israel, you have two shuls that has a lot of good luck. Mammash, you see the blessing of Hashem every second of it. One of them is Musa Yov, and one of them is the Yazdi. Yazdi is Persians, people that came from Yazd. Yazd is a city in Iran. Jews that came from Yazd. They opened a synagogue, I don't know, about 100 years ago, maybe 70 years ago. I don't know exactly the date, but 2 or 3 generations ago in Yerushalayim. It wasn't such a big place, smaller than this shul. And who did they bring to speak over there? Rabbi Vadia Yosef Zatzal. Every week, his weekly shiur would be from Nehiyasi. But now, you know, when you are the number one speaker in the Torah world, or one of the biggest, thousands of people wants to come and hear you. You cannot put thousands of people in a yeshiva. What do they do? There's a basement, there's another terrace, they put the speaker on the street, have 100 people on the street with the speaker, another 100 in the basement, another 50 on the top, inside the shul like sardines. 1,000 people in a place that can hold 100, 150, you push 1,000. They came to Rav Ovadia after a few years. They said to him, Rabbi, you have to move to a bigger shul. It's too crowded here, like sardines, no room, mess. He said, how can I spit to a well that I drank from it for 4 years. How can I do it to these people? Their happiness of their life is that I agreed to speak in their shul. These simple tzadikim, Persians, they will do everything they can for this shiur to be here. Do you know what will happen to them if I one day come and tell them I'm leaving you and I'm going to a different synagogue? I will break them. I can never do it. Till the last day of his life he spoke there. Not only that, his son now speaks there instead of him, the chief rabbi of Yitzhak Yosef. And there is another synagogue similar, his name is Musaev. Bukharians that came over 100 years ago, 120 years ago to Jerusalem, in the days that people used to have horses horses, donkeys, you know, those days. And they came into Jerusalem and they were not so rich and everyone gave his heart into building this place, Musaev. The main one that was building it, it was a Bukharian Jew, Musaev. You have a lot of Bukharians now that their name is Musaev. And this was 6 generations ago. And this place is packed from morning to night every day. From morning to night, it doesn't stop. One minyan after the other, every night speaker speaks there. Rav Motsafi, Rav Merediahu, the son of Rav Ovadia, everyone. Why? Because everyone put his blood into these places. The Persians and the Bukharians who came to build those shuls, they did it with such devotion and such So much love and so much effort. When they built the yeshiva, I saw a little video about it that the first rabbi described. They didn't have money at all. There was no money. Everyone participated in building the place with his own hands. They saved a little money, they bought few bricks, they make another one. Saved a little money, they bought bricks, they made it. That's how they made it. Not like today, you have a rich guy, writes a $10 million, put my father's name on a building, and that's the end of it. It was a little different world. But that's it. So we move back to when we started. So we have now the life of Sarah, and as we know, Vata mot Sarah, and Sarah passed when she's 127. He was 7 years old. Now I want to remind you, there was no old age yet. Everyone looked young. People did not age like today. Abraham asked Hashem that people will have time to do teshuvah when they begin to see that they're becoming more and more older and older. They will give them enough time to prepare for their transfer to the next world. Yaakov later asked for sicknesses. Sickness gives you X amount of months to prepare for, to do teshuvah. The main reason Avraham asked for the father to look older than the son, because when they look alike, sometimes the son is 20 and his father is 45. And if you look at the picture of the father when he was 20, it's like a twin. You cannot tell the difference. Twins, same face. So imagine if both of them stayed at 20. You don't know who the father, who doesn't know the son. It's a problem. Who should you respect? Who should you address? Right? So the question, Rabotai, first question for today, we have a rule. What is the rule? If you are on the way to do a mitzvah, you cannot get damage. Shluch HaMitzvah enan nizoki. That's literally what's written. Shluch HaMitzvah, a messenger of a mitzvah, someone who is busy with a mitzvah or was sent by someone to do a mitzvah. While he's busy with the mitzvah, he cannot get damaged. This was written in the Talmud 2,000 years ago. We have a very big problem. Everybody knows, you don't have to be a genius to know, I can show you everyday cases, everyday, of people that actually got hurt in the middle of their mitzvah. If you remember a few years ago, 10 years ago, 8 years ago, I don't remember exactly, in Hanoch, in the middle of Shacharit, one Arab got into the shul and killed 4 righteous people. People. The Rabbi is in the middle of praying. How did it happen? How many times a person was on the way to teach Torah, on the way to a wedding, to be with some meachatan and kalai, there was an accident and they died. 45 people just died in Meron. Went to the yahrzeit of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, listened to some holy songs, went there, they died in the middle of doing a mitzvah, or at least something positive. I can give you thousands of cases of people that actually got damaged in the middle of doing mitzvah. Just a few days ago, someone stopped to help someone that was stuck with a flat tire. He was trying to find help. He didn't know what to do. And someone stopped, and while he was changing the tire to a stranger, a truck hit him and killed him on the spot. So how do you explain such a tragedy? I stopped to help a stranger, pure chesed, not for money, and I get killed. What happened to this ma'ar? Now I know you probably are shocked now. My job is to prove you the opposite, not to make you infidels. Right? My job is to make you believers, not to highlight things that will raise questions. But I'm sure you know me well enough to know that it's only hypothetically speaking. Soon, We will clarify the mystery. The answer is Rabotai. First, we know the same Gemara says that if you are busy in a mitzvah in a place that is dangerous, it's known that every day people get killed there, you're in the middle of a battle, people are shooting, bombs are falling and you want to help a wounded soldier to try to save his life because there is a high risk to die over there. Shh. The Gemara says, "Bemakom she'shrifa hezekah shani." A place that is subject to tragedies, that is known that there's Arabs shooting over there, Or there are bad people that robbing people in the middle of the night over there, all kinds of drug dealers and who knows what else. Why are you going into such an area? If you enter your place in a dangerous place, in a village of murderers and terrorists and who knows what else and kidnappers. When you go to dangerous places or you know there is a country full of corona and for whatever reason you decide decided to have a trip over there, in the middle of thousands of people dying there every day, and you actually got hurt, is on you. Who gave you permission to go to a place of danger? You may say, I didn't choose it, I wanted to help another Jew to save his life. Yes, true. But even that, you have to think, does the Torah demand for me to die in order for me to save the life of another Jew? Do I have to give my life to save someone else's life? The answer is no. Chayye Chakotmim, the Aruls, your life comes first before someone else, before your brother. Your life comes first unless you are an ignorant Jew and he's a Talmid Chacham. If he's a rabbi who teaches Torah to the public, then you're obligated to sacrifice your life and give him the life. Meaning you have enough water for you or for him. If you are a regular Jew and he's a regular Jew, you have to use the water. You're not allowed to do half and half because you both die. And you're not allowed to give him. The Torah says, "Chayecha kodmin." You have to drink. You don't have permission to give up your life for someone else. Unless you are not a teacher or someone that helps the public and he is. In that case, you're allowed to give him the life and sacrifice your life for the sake of the nation of Israel or for the sake of the world. What happens if both of you are telling me they're chachamim? You are a rabbi that teaches a lot of Torah, and he's a rabbi that teaches a lot of Torah. Are you allowed to say, well, since he's teaching a lot of Torah and he's very valuable for the Jewish nation, I might as well give him the water, or let him get on a helicopter and get saved and let me drown here? The answer is you're not allowed. If you're equal to him, you come first. He only comes first if he's your rabbi or if he's someone who teaches Torah to the public, saves souls, makes people religious, then he's an asset to the entire Jewish nation. As a result of that, you are allowed to say, "You are more important than me, take it." What happens if you are 90 years old and he is 20? You anyway know you have one month or two to live. You already feel it. You begin to smell already the Garden of Eden before you fall asleep. And he is your grandson, 20 years old, he just started his life. Are you allowed to give him the water and you die and he will get saved? Or no, "chai echakod mim," your life comes first. What are you doing, this crazy? A lot of hard questions in life. What is the law? What do you think? Your life, you don't own your life, remember this. Your life, it's like a car that was leased to you, it's not yours. You use it, you park it anywhere you want, you do whatever you want with that. But you have to return it. And when you return it, they kill you, these crooks. Every scratch, $1,000, $500. Oh, the tires is different than what we gave it to you. We gave it to you with this brand, which was garbage, and you put a different brand, which is also garbage. Garbage replace garbage. We gave you Anthony and you put Mark. Whoa, no, it's $160 multiplied by 4. You don't want to pay? I'm sorry. What else? Oh, wait a minute. You have this and you have that. Oh, the mileage. Ooh. You want to go for the mileage? Bottom line, but now there's something even better. Now there's shortage in cars. Let's say you leased a car 3 years ago. You pay $400 a month. The lease matured right now. If you want to lease the same car, it will be $700. Not 400. So you don't want to lease the car for double, so you want to buy out your car. They're gonna give you Shiv'ah Medorege, no, that you should give up and not buy the car. We cannot accept the check by mail. You have to go to one of the dealers. Now you go to the dealer, no, sorry, we don't take care of it. You have to go to the place where the car originally was purchased. "Where do I even know? Where? Go find a place." "Why can't I give you the money? You are the company, you own the car, no?" "I don't want." Why? They want you to give up. If they take the car, why should they give you the car for $20,000 if they can take it from you and sell it for $30,000, $32,000? So they will do everything they can not to let you buy the car. Used to be very easy. You call 3 years ago, When he's finished next week, he asks, "What would you do, sir? Would you like to give it back, go to this place, inspect it, or you would purchase it? If it's the purchase, this is the purchase price, send the check, and you're done." They send you the title a month later. Now, Shivam Adoregheno, greed, crooks, "Why should we let him buy it for the original contract?" But you made a contract. Maybe the car would go down. You give the person the option, but they don't give. Bottom line, your life is a lease. You don't own it. The same way you got the car with no scratches, bring it with no scratches. You got it with these tires, bring it with these tires. You got it with this kind of equipment, you You have to return it. Why? Hashem gave you life, you cannot do whatever you want with that. So what's the answer? A grandpa can give the life to his son, his grandson, since anyway I lived my life, or no? I will ask it in a different way. If you murder a 20-year-old person, what's the punishment in the Torah? Death. Execution. How? There are 4 ways of execution. Stoning, it's the worst. After that, burning. After that, saw and choking. 4 different ways of death. Which one of the 4 is murder? Sword. Sword. Which one is worse, stoning or sword? Sword. Sword, it's very scary obviously, you know they are about to chop your head off with a very sharp sword, like the Japanese samurai. Shh! And your head became a basketball. Rolling on the floor. But how long is the suffering? My opinion, not more than a minute. With the preparation, when you see the guy is taking the sword and you're about to feel it any second and you probably faint before, maybe they give you this wine. They give you the wine, 50% alcohol, with the pieces. After you drink it, you don't know where you are. It's like drinking a big full glass of whiskey Whiskey. The wine back then had 50% alcohol, not like today, 9% and you're already dizzy. Rabbi, I have condition. I cannot drink wine. Can I not do Havdalah? Can I do Arba Kosot on grape juice? Why? Cannot drink even a sip of wine. Imagine he has to drink this wine with 50% alcohol, he doesn't remember his name. So he doesn't know what's going on, one second and it's over. But stoning is a long process. You have to wear a special pajama and walk, and all the people and your relatives are standing on both sides of the road and crying and screaming, and people are fainting. You see your children are screaming for being mechalel Shabbat. They take you to a hill, they throw you from there. Most likely you will die by the time you hit the floor. Sometimes not. Then they roll a huge rock from the top and make a soup out of you. And if you're still alive, meaning it didn't hit your head or something like that, then there are people standing over there with stones and throw it and the person died. I know it sounds awful. The good news is that something like this did not happen out in the heaven. Not that there were not Mechanele Shabbat. Here and there you had Mechanele Shabbat. But the Torah made it almost impossible, almost impossible for a person to actually be executed. Because you have to investigate two witnesses and they have to tell you all the details precisely. What time it was, when was it, under the tree, what was the size of the fruit on the tree, and all kinds of questions. But eventually One of the questions, you will have a contradiction between the two witnesses that are in two different rooms. They ask you, what was the size of the peach? Maybe, I don't know, half a pound each? They ask the other one, what was it? Oh, they were big ones, a pound. So, oh, he said half a pound, you said one pound. You are not reliable witnesses. And it's not such a joke. Who cares about the peach now? I'm telling you, this guy was lit a cigarette under the peach tree. You're telling me what size the peach was? Why do I care about the peach? I told you the street, I told you the place, I told you the time, I told you what he was wearing, I told you what kind of cigarette, I told you everything. I even warned him. I told him what you do is death by stoning. It's written in the Torah. And he said, I can care less. All the details I gave you correctly, and the other guy gave you the same thing. Why do you care about the size The answer, we don't really care. On purpose, we are trying to let him go. We're not under panic here. Hashem is going to take care of him. Why should we kill him? Why should we, the rabbis of the Sanhedrin, 71 chachamim, why should we sentence him to death? Let him go back and Hashem will execute him. Once every 7 years, they And they did it. Now, one guy once asked me, I don't get it. The Torah speaks about it so long, and the Gemara speaks about it, Masechet Sanhedrin, there's pages about it. And so many words were actually told about it, and in the end it never happened. So what is this? This whole thing is hypothetically speaking? It's not reality. So I told that guy, you're right. If you break Shabbat, no one will execute you, especially today there's no Sanhedrin. But even when there was Sanhedrin, the fact that two witnesses would come and testify exactly the same is very rare. So you will get away with that for the time being. But doesn't it kill you when you read in the Torah that that's what God said that you deserve to to get, how do you look at yourself in the mirror? How can you live with yourself that when you're actually about to do something, the one who supply you with oxygen and everything you have told you that someone who does what you are doing, what you're about to do, deserves to die by exploding his head with rocks. And you You're still gonna light that cigarette? And you're still gonna start that car and drive? And you're still gonna turn the TV on and play with the remote? After that you read in the Torah and in the Gemara and in the Oral Torah that that's what you deserve to get? That's one thing. If that's not enough to wake you up, remember that this stoning will take place. After you go to the court of heaven, you're gonna have to get millions of stonings. Not one, millions for every time you broke Shabbat. Every time by itself it's a stoning. In one Shabbat you can get 10,000 stonings. Driving from here to upstate could be 1,000 stonings. One hour drive. Every time you hit the gas is a new stoning. You hit it again, a new stoning. You hit it again, a new stoning. You blink, You press the brake, you open the door, every one of them is a separate violation of Shabbat. So in one Shabbat you can have thousands of stonings. Multiply by 7 years of your life, you do the math. Each one of them will happen. There's no discount. If you have 50,000 stonings, you're not gonna get 49,999 because the Maras de Hashem does not give up on anything. Unless you did teshuvah. That's a different story. You did teshuvah before you die, it changes your status. But if not, you are to pay for every one of the violations. Now you may ask me, where is exactly the stoning take place? The body is in a grave. Who's gonna throw rocks at the body? The body was covered by the, by the sand. And the soul went up to the court of heaven. The soul is a spiritual energy. If there is a soul right here in the room, and for sure there are, if I take this bottle of water and throw it and hit that soul, let's say the soul is right here next to my hand, and I threw it and I hit his nose. What happened? The nose is not material. The battle will go through the face. It's not going to change anything. Do you understand what I'm saying here or no? It's all air. There's no physical object here. Physical object, one hit the other, it makes noise, there's resistance, there is feelings. But when you go like this, try to grab your ankle. 'Come, Uncle Joe, where are you? Why you running away? What are you going to do?' Some of the people that died, they wanted to call 911 to save their life. I remember the soul came out of the body. That one guy was electrocuted from the aquarium with the fish. He came to give food for the fish and some wire inside came out and the water is passing electric. Once he put his hand inside, shh, Got a shot, fell and died. Once he's dead now, he sees the body, the soul comes out of the body and he looks down and he sees the body and he sees the phone. So he's trying to grab the phone, pick it up and dial 911, but the hands cannot grab it. Goes on empty. Because to move material, you need material. So he's trying and, you know, Drives you crazy. Come on, let me die. Nothing. There's nothing to press. So the question is, in that case, where exactly is the stoning? We can throw thousands of rocks on the soul and won't feel anything. The answer is, let's not be stupid. First of all, if the Torah said there is stoning and there is there is all the death in the next world, and there is hell, and there is fire, and there is Kaf Hakela, there's 100% exists. Of course, you want to understand how it's done technically? No problem. When you go to sleep and you have a nightmare, the dream was less than a minute. The scientists say the dream is 9 seconds. They check, electro— electrolysis, they check into the brain, brain and this and the pulse. And the person is excited, 9 seconds, and he screams, "Ahh!" And his wife says, "Relax, Moshe, relax. It was only a dream." So, it takes him about a minute, he drinks water, his pulse is on 200, and then he begins to tell the nightmare. 6 months of events. Conversation, torture, drowning, sharks. This, the Arabs picked me up, took me to Lebanon, Hezbollah. The wife said, I don't get it, you went to sleep 3 minutes ago. How 6 months of events fit in 2 or 3 minutes? How do you fit all this conversation you had with Muhammad, the guy who used to torture you in Lebanon? Every day torture you 6 hours. How exactly this 6 hours 6 hours fit in 3 minutes dream? The CD has X amount of room. If you have 1 gigabyte, can you fit inside 500 gigabytes in 1 gigabyte USB? No, no room on a disk. So where in, as far as time aspect, how 6 months fit in 9 seconds dream? The answer, it's all simulation. Spiritual simulation. The next world doesn't have material. It's all thoughts and telepathy. Everything is spiritual there. So just like in a dream, you die, but your body is laying in bed with the AC and relaxing on a good $2,000 mattress. Or they eat in the winter under a beautiful $2,000 blanket, you know. And in the meantime, while your— once your body enjoy the heat or the cold and the beautiful, great, comfortable bed, your soul is in Auschwitz being tortured for 3 years. And when you wake up, you just understood that you actually back to this world, but you were somewhere suffering for 3 years for real with the fire, with the torture, with the beating, with everything. That's hell. If Hashem decides you gotta hell for 500 years, you will feel it 500 years in Auschwitz. Exactly one to one. And if you decide you're gonna go through all this stoning and all that, one to one, that's how you're gonna feel. Just like in a dream you scream and you sweat and you can get a heart attack from a bad dream. That's because the soul goes exactly Exactly through the pain, exactly. No different. If you dream you fall from a building, it's real. You actually feel the fear and you're about to hit the ground and you see how your head is smashed to pieces, everything. I remember 30 years ago I had a horrible dream. A horrible dream. It took me hours to digest how horrible this dream was. What was my dream? Back then AIDS came out to the world, you know, I think it was 1981, 1980-something, AIDS. So what happened, I had a dream that I'm speaking on a payphone. Remember, there's no cell phone. You had payphones, you know, rotary phones, payphone back then. So I'm standing in a payphone and one person came with a needle and stuck it to my leg and say, "Welcome to the club of the AIDS patients." I remember this was the year that he had so much brainwashing about AIDS. Nobody knew anything about it. You get it from kissing, you don't get it, blood transfusion, intimacy, a lot of different— nobody knew. Just like with COVID in the first few months, nobody knew what's going on here. So, it was such a fear as it is. It was like the worst disease you can imagine. Everyone was panicking. They hear this guy got it, that one, HIV, AIDS, wow. So much fear. Imagine in a dream that you're in a pay phone and someone's sticking with a needle. You actually feel the needle and he tells you this needle is with AIDS. How horrible you feel in a dream. Then you wake up and you feel You feel like you won the lottery. Oh, it was only a dream, thank G-d. Ah, you're about to do some Datodaya in Yeshua? Why are you making this meal? $3,000 lox and fish and some challah and breads. What's going on over here? No, I want to thank Hashem that it was only a dream. That reminds me of a good joke I heard. One guy died and in his funeral someone was standing, someone was standing next to the grave and screamed to him, "Mahulecha! Mahulecha! Mahulecha!" "I forgive you! I forgive you! I forgive you!" So they say to somebody in the funeral asking, "What happened? He stole money from you?" He said, "No, he was my shachan." He made my shit hook. I have to tell him, I forgive you for all the problems you gave me. You know, people make jokes. A lot of people say, you know, all kinds of jokes, but in reality, they're pretty happy from where they are. All right, let's move on. So in reality, in a dream, you actually feel it real. The same thing happened. You don't need a body. If your soul enjoy the highest pleasure that you can imagine, you don't need a body for it. Everything is anyway in the brain. Feelings, love, excitement, it's all in the brain. It's all in the head. All these emotions, if you eliminate the brain, you don't have anything. The heart is a piece of flesh, a piece of meat. The heart itself, what is the heart? The heart understands what to do between left and right. Everybody understands, so in the brain, in the brain, that's where the soul is. So the question that we had is, the old grandpa, 90 years old, forgot about him, right? Grandpa, he wants to give life to his grandson. Is he allowed or no? So I started to ask, if you murder a 90 years old person and you murder a 20-year-old person. When you murder a 20-year-old, you get execution by saw. If you kill someone who is 120 years old, the doctor just announced he has 1 hour to live. And that's it. He's already not functioning. He's in coma already. Could be in coma for years. Doctors say based on our equipment He has maximum an hour to live. It comes any second. And someone took a pillow and choked him in bed and killed him. Killed him. Taking a 20-year-old, break his head with a rock, kill him. Death penalty by soap, choking this old man, 120 years old. What is the punishment? Same thing. Same thing? How can it be? It's not fair. It's not fair, I'm sorry. He's 20 years old, most likely he would live to 80 at least. He stole 6 years of his life, no? For sure more than what you stole from the old man. Even if he dies in a week, it's still more than in an hour. How can it be that stealing 6 years of life stealing 1 hour of life get exactly the same punishment? The answer is, this is in this world. What more you can give a person more than death? That's the maximum you can give him. What are you gonna kill him again now? He's dead already now. What are you gonna do, stab him one more time? Not gonna make a difference. But when he goes to the afterlife and he has a trial, he has to be punished for the consequences of his action. Meshalen la adam ki pri magala. So the old man, you didn't really affect his life. If he was righteous, he's righteous. If he was wicked, he died wicked. One way or the other, he's the same like he was before the death. But the 20-year-old, you took away 6 years of Torah and learning and chesed and mitzvot support and children and grandchildren. You have to be responsible for everything. Obviously it's not the same. But the question is, how is it to begin with that for one hour of life they give you execution? That, I mean, punishment should be measure for measure. You kill someone, 20, and you 20, they kill you the same. Measure for measure. If you took an hour from someone's life, how is it logical that the court, the Sanhedrin, will actually execute you for shortening his life by one hour? Which anyway, that hour, what would he do? Lay in bed, he's in coma, or watch some stupid show. One of the two, right? Sometimes you actually helped him. If you killed him an hour before he died, you just saved him another hour of sins watching his stupid show. A stupid show on television, which is also not allowed. So he actually gave him less punishments. So he did him a favor. So either way you look at it, you don't deserve to die for it. The answer, you do. Why is it? Because one second of life, one second of life can buy eternity. If this old man, before he would pass, would say the sentence 'Dear God, I'm so sorry. I really ashamed and embarrassed for everything I've done. I wish I can go back and fix it.' Just 5 seconds. One sentence like this already help him a lot. Not that he's dismissed from all his crimes. He has to pay for all of them. But it's already a partial teshuvah. The fact that you killed him, you actually took this opportunity from him. If you're willing to do such thing and take moments of someone's life that in moments he can actually save himself from who knows what, then you deserve the worst. Because remember, life, there's no words to describe the value of life. And that's why I keep explaining to people that the life that Hashem gave you, you already own it. That's why you're not allowed to commit suicide. If you commit suicide, you are judged as a murderer, like you murdered a stranger. You murdered yourself, it counts like you murdered someone else. Many people will never dare to murder another person, but they actually kill themselves. If you tell them, before you die, you have some enemies, why don't you go and kill them? And then kill yourself. It's an opportunity to take some revenge. Your ex, your boss, your partner who stole all your money, they are the reason you're about to kill yourself. Don't die for nothing. Go shoot them, kill all of them, and then shoot yourself in the head. You have nothing to be afraid of. He won't do it. What, I'm a murderer? I leave them to God. So while you're killing yourself, I can take the pain. Boom. And it's the same thing. He killed himself, it's not killing them. Now I want to ask you, Rabbi Tali, how did Abraham get punished when he takes his son Yitzchak after 100 years he waited for him? And now Yitzchak is 37 years old. After finally you see your son is growing and he's 37 years old, you take him to the Akeidah, you're willing to sacrifice him into Hashem with no question asked. For you, anything Hashem. You wake up very early in the morning and you rush to do the mitzvah. That will break your heart, but no question asked. Not even in his mind. As he about to do it, Hashem stopped him. Don't do it. That second, the Satan shows Sarah an image of Abraham slaughtering Yitzchak. She saw actually a YouTube film. Well, Yitzchak is dead. She waited for him 90 years. 90 years. Finally, she raised him 37 years and he's dying now. She sees an image that her son is dead. That second she died. So I don't get it. How did Avraham What she was busy, one of the most important mitzvot in the history of this world. His reward was that his wife that he loved very much died at that second, thanks to that mitzvah. Didn't we say the rule, people that are busy with mitzvah cannot be damaged. Now I want to ask you a question, who do you think was smarter, us us or Chazal, our sages from the Talmud? In case you have a doubt what the answer is, let me just assure you, if you take 10,000 rabbis that you admire the most in the world, no exaggeration, 10,000 top righteous holy big scholars of Torah, 10,000. You put them on a scale and you put Rabbi Akiva on the other side of the scale. Who do you think will be heavier in Torah and Mitzvot? The 10,000 rabbis or Rabbi Akiva? What do you think? Rabbi Akiva. No question. In his level, in his knowledge, in his holiness, in his devotion, in his Emunah, he is better than 10,000 combined that lives among us. Without hurting the respect of anyone, everyone according to this generation deserves all the credit. We're not, Chas V'Shalom, putting anyone down. And we also don't mention names, so there's no issue with it. Just for you to understand what does it mean, Chazal. This is only one rabbi, Rabbi Akiva, and you had hundreds of them, hundreds of them, Tanaim. So what do you think? Who is smarter, us or them? Obviously they're a billion times smarter than us. So if somebody like us already know that sometimes people in the middle of mitzvah get hurt, we see it every day or every other day or every week. Every fool like us knows that people are dying in the middle of mitzvah or people getting hurt in the middle of mitzvah or people have accidents on the way to yeshiva or to synagogue. Synagogue or to shiur Torah, or all kinds of other problems. Or someone wanted to open a shul and the neighbors called the government, the government gave him a huge fine. So that's what I deserve? I want to make a synagogue for the people to come pray and learn Torah and this is what I get? I can give you millions of examples. Now why do you think the Chachamim didn't see it? Were they blind? They live in a bubble? They didn't know that so many times people are on the way to Mitzvah and they get hurt? Not only that, The Gemara themselves describe cases like this, that someone was in the middle of respecting his father, he asked him to go on the ladder to, you know, to do mitzvot shiluach hakem, and the ladder broke and he fell and died. So how can it be? The Torah says if you respect your parents, you live long life, and if you do shiluach hakem, you would live long life. In the middle of this mitzvah that gives long life, he died? How can it be? The Gemara brings it up. So the answer is for sure they knew it. What we know, they knew a million times better. So let's try to understand. Let me clarify it for you. First, we already answered some of it by saying that this mitzvah, this rule applies only when there is no place of danger. You go to dangerous neighborhood, you got hurt, it's on you. Nobody told you to go there. What happened if you went there and nobody touched you? Hashem made you a miracle. The gang that saw you with your tie and your nice leather case and your expensive watch, they're already planning to come, stab you and steal everything you have. And last second Hashem sent some police car to make a turn into that block. You don't know. You just got saved from a stab and from losing everything you had in the bank. Once you die, you will see that the miracle that Hashem did to you the day that you took a risk in your life cost you X amount of your good credits. Meaning it wasn't for free. Menachin lo mischuyotav. So if Hashem has to protect you every day because because you drive like a lunatic, you cut people, you drive, you take risks, you make sharp turns and the other. Every day that you're not dead, some of your mitzvot are being deleted from your file. Only Hashem knows to do the calculation. I saved your life today, I take 1,000 mitzvot. I save your life tomorrow, I take another 1,000. I save your life the next day, you'll be able to one day come to Shamayim knowing you have millions of mitzvot. Hot and find out you're totally naked. Well, it's not my fault. You went to live among crazy people, dangerous people, gunshots, this, that. Who told you to do that? I counted on you to make me miracles. Who exactly do you think you are, Avraham Avinu, that I'm gonna have to interfere with the laws of nature and send the police every day and send you this and send you that and send you that doctor and make that miracle for you and an ambulance showed up How many miracles I have to perform for you? These miracles come at cost. But that's only explaining if someone got hurt in Gaza or in some neighborhood in Brazil that everybody gets killed there. Okay, I understand that. But what happened if someone was driving in Queens to Shiur Torah, Chas V'Shalom Ekar Yedim, and he died? He was on the way to go and learn or go to shacharit or he went to shiur Torah and he got a ticket outside. Well, how come? Shlichem mitzvah en am is okay. The answer is, of course, that in the middle of the mitzvah something bad can happen or something that may look bad. Of course, otherwise there would not be any free will in the world. If everything would be black and white, everyone would be righteous. What it is, Rabotai, is that if you think that because you did that mitzvah, this bad came to you, you are an infidel. You are a kofir. If it happened to you while you're busy with a mitzvah, it can happen. But this is because of a sin you did 5 years ago. On Rosh Hashanah, Hashem judged you for that and He gave you that punishment. What is the punishment? Someone will rob you. And steal your expensive watch, $20,000 watch. When will it happen? When you're in the middle of doing a mitzvah. You went to save someone's life and someone stole from you. I just heard about a case of two boys that are problematic youth. They were invited by a righteous person to their house to try to be mekarev there, and they robbed him for $10,000 in his house. Well, they were by his house for Shabbat, these two lowlifes. You understand? So now, first thing will come to his mind is, I don't understand. I'm trying to save lost children, lost souls. I bring them into my house, try to give them love, I try to talk to them out to stop being young criminals, and what do they do? I go to sleep, they steal everything from my house and run. So how can it be? The answer is that they The $10,000 that happened to that person has nothing to do with having those two guests in the house. Obviously, Hashem is not worse than us. What are we gonna do for him and he's gonna stab us in the back? Even we don't like to do it to our friends. So obviously there's nothing to do with that. That's what the Gemara says. Shluchem mitzvah en ani zukim. Once you are in a mitzvah, this mitzvah will only bring you good. It will not add any bad to your file. If while you're doing the mitzvah you got something bad, it has nothing to do with this mitzvah. It's something that already was decreed on you from way before. After all, there's still a little sour taste after the answer. It's still not settling perfect in my mind. So, okay, I understand. All right, there's nothing— that point is totally logical. It cannot be that I will sacrifice for Hashem and in return He's going to punish me for that. Obviously, it's not possible. But He couldn't wait another hour to give me the loss? It had to be in the middle of the 10 minutes that I was busy with the mitzvah? It had to happen in the middle of the lecture? It had to happen when I ran to save someone's life? Why it didn't happen before or after? The answer is, Rabbanu, I'll teach you a big secret. When it happens to you when you are in the middle of a mitzvah and you do not question Hashem at all, thank you Hashem, no questions asked, your reward is endless. That's a great bonus. Just when you feel great and you're about to sacrifice something for Hashem, that second something bad happens to you. That's when you should be the happiest. Thank you, Hashem. If you get to this level, you can already, Baruch Hashem, be counted as Avraham Avinu of the generation. Remember, Avraham Avinu is a legend now. Not because he passed the 10 tests that Hashem gave him. Some of these tests we would also pass. If you had only one son and Hashem directly come and ask you to go and sacrifice him, can you go against Hashem, a religious person? You know, if Hashem say it, I have to listen with all the pain in the heart. But you would have million questions against Hashem. 'How can it be? What kind of a God is this? Why is He contradicting Himself? He told me to tell the goyim not to kill their children. Now I have to go and kill my own son, and I'm going to look like a joker in front of all these goyim. And plus, how are they going to appreciate Hashem that I was asked to kill my only son for Him? If there was any chance for them to become religious, it's gone right now. Plus, Hashem told me your son will inherit you, and now He tells me to kill him.' and he told me your servant Eliezer will not inherit you, your own son, and now he tells me to kill him. How can it be? The greatness of Abraham that none of the above even crossed his mind. That's why he's a legend. Not because he finally surrendered to his Yetzer Hara and did what Hashem told him. I promise you some of the Arab Hamas murderers would do that. 'Hamad, take Saeed and go throw him from the building for the sake of Allah.' 'Eh, of course, Bismillah, I run.' So what? So now we're gonna make Ahmed Muhammad Muhammadino? Maybe we should open another chapter in the Torah for him. It's another Mitzvah leak, no? That's not what makes you great. We are so impressed. Wow, he was willing to sacrifice his son. That's not the main thing, you're getting very confused here. The greatness of Abraham that Hashem testified that he did not question him a second in his life. That's why he's a legend. Everything else, there are a lot of other righteous people that would have done the same. Don't we have hundreds of Jews who died for Kiddush Hashem? They had a way to save their life and they chose to die for Hashem. We have hundreds of them. It's a lot of stories. Actually, Rabbi Yosef Karo, the writer of Shulchan Aruch, 500 years ago, he wrote, all my life I was hoping that I will die like Rabbi Yosef Molcho. That the Christian Imach Shemam, this Inquisition time, 500 years ago, Rabbi Yosef Karo and their family escaped from Spain to Portugal and then from Portugal to Israel. Spain and Portugal was the Christian Inquisition that started in Spain. So Jews escaped from Spain to Portugal, which was close, same language, same, you know, even though now it's Portuguese, but it was similar culture. So first they escaped to Portugal and after a while They went also to Portugal to hunt the Jews. So he said all his life he dreamed to die like they killed Rabbi Yosef Molko with the tortures that they gave him. They told him, "Come back to Christianity or we'll kill you in public." And he did not want to surrender to them and they killed him in the worst possible way in front of thousands of people. So he's saying, all my life I was hoping that I will have the merit to die like him on Kiddush Hashem. Because you go to a place in heaven that is the highest. But there is one thing that is even higher than that. What is it? To teach people Torah and make them righteous. That's why I'm gonna have a mission. I'm gonna write the Shulchan Aruch. It's more important than to die like he died for Kiddush Hashem. Imagine this, to be a Mitzakei Harabin. Today people can be Mitzakei Harabin without even knowing Torah. Giving money. The more money you give, the more Mitzakei Harabin you are. The more Mitzakei Harabin you are, you're in a very good place in the next world. And it's eternal. But people unfortunately are foolish. Instead of giving all their money to this, what do they spend their money on? 99.9% of nonsense. Things that they don't even need. Extra clothing and extra shoes and more cars and more trips. 99% of that they could live without. If they would take all the money they throw at garbage and watches and jewelry and this vacation and that vacation and would invest it by saving another 1,000 people in their lifetime, they would be the happiest for eternity. Now they will be the most miserable ones for eternity because the truth is that I could have got 1,000 souls to my account and I gave it up on leather jackets and on stupid vacation and all kinds of sport cars will hunt them for eternity in the world of the truth. Because over here the Satan distract you not to think about it. He is interested that you waste your money on garbage. But over there, there's no distraction. You focus 100% on what you did right and what you did wrong. And that's why, you know, some people, those who did that, they will be extremely satisfied and happy. "Wow, Baruch Hashem, I was not fooled by the Satan." But most people, they got fooled by the Satan, and they'll be very upset at it. So, Avotai, we learned one very important thing. If something happens to you in the middle of mitzvah, don't ever question Hashem. You have to know there's nothing to do what you did right now. This is because of something else. Now, you know, today everywhere you go you have Baruch Hashem schools. It's for girls, it's called Bete Yaakov, or like the Ashkenazim say, Bess Yaakov, right? It's the same thing. Who made schools for girls? Girls never went to school all over the world. Until, I don't know, 8 years ago. For sure, to be on the safe side, 8 years ago. Every girl in the world, in every country, was born into a family and grew up. And from a young age, I don't know, 5, 6, 7, once she started to understand what's going on, She was participating in the house chores. Helping the mother, helping the grandmother, sewing, knitting, going, bringing water from the well, taking care of the chicken, taking care of the lamb, taking care of the meat or the fish, or preparing or cooking or taking care of the babies and taking them to the lake to give them a shower. There's a lot of work. Life was not a picnic here. You press few buttons Lundry is ready, everything gets dried an hour later, everything is done with your phone, remote control. Today I found out that you can get bagels through your phone. There's an app. App! So it says, you know, what would you like? You put dozen bagels, you put what kind of bagels, and you send it. With your credit card information. Credit card gets charged right away. You drive now, I don't know, 5 minutes to the bagel store. By the time you're there, there is a section that all the people who did it on the app don't have to wait on lines. 20 people waiting, this guy wants bagel with butter, this guy bagel with cream cheese, this guy 5 coffees. Who has patience enough to wait 3 minutes to get a dozen bagels? So as soon as you come, you have some kind of confirmation, ah, dozen bagels. You can see it right here, sir. Welcome to America. It wasn't like that 80 years ago. So girls did not go to school. There was no schools for girls, even by going. So the question now, how all of a sudden every Jewish girl now going to school? And they learn sometimes more Torah than boys. Let me tell you the story of it. There was a woman Her name was Sarah Schneirel. You heard that name? Sarah Schneirel? The beginning of Beit Yaakov, there was a lot of resistance. People fought it. What is this? Girl needs to learn Torah? You're gonna destroy the world. Why? It's written in the Torah, someone will take his daughter to yeshiva to teach her Torah. It's like teaching her the flute, you know, it's not good, it's waste of time, right? Her job is not to learn Gemara. Her job is to learn what needs to be done, how to be a mother, how to be a wife one day, how to clean, to cook, to do all the things that you need, raise children. They went to ask the Chafetz Chaim. So it was close to 100 years ago. I mean past, like 80-something years ago. They went to ask the Chafetz Chaim. Chafetz Chaim said, "Oi, li, oi." "Oi" what? "Something so big is happening in the world and I did not have a share in it?" That finished the argument. Some were for it, some were against it. Why she wanted to open school for girls? Why all of a sudden religious girl wanna make school and teach Torah and Navi and Chumash to teach girls Torah and Halacha and Musa? What for? What was missing? The answer is Rabotai. We were in the middle of a spiritual Holocaust. The Haskalah movement that started 220 years ago, in 120 years destroyed the Jewish nation. 90% was destroyed. Jews started to go to university of goyim and one by one became more wicked than the other. Infidels, they learned heresy, they had no faith, they made fun of the religion, This guy is a doctor, this one is a lawyer, and this one is a judge. Similar to what happens here in America. The more academic you are, usually, usually, there's always an exception to the rule, usually the more academic you are, the more wicked you are. Usually. It's not only by Jews, it's also by goyim. If you go to Mexico City, the big city of Mexico, Mexico, when everyone with suit and ties and expensive cars and offices and export and import and who knows what. Over there you don't find churches, almost at all. But every other place in Mexico where the poor people work, the farmers, the people with the horses and the donkeys and the fields and the corns and the tortillas and all these people, every block you have a church. The more ignorant people are, the more poor and down to earth they are, the more they are with Hashem. The more fancy-schmancy they become, the less time they have for Hashem. All over the world, every generation and generation. It wasn't— it's not something new that only today. It always was the case. The Torah speaks about it in a few different places. The Talmud speaks about it many, many times in different places. Places. That's not the topic right now, but you should know that. When she saw that there's so much of scholar movement, like today, Rabbi, thank you for trying to get me a shiduch. I cannot go out with this guy. Why? He doesn't have a degree. Doesn't have a degree. Why exactly you care about degree is the He learns already 10 years in yeshiva, he knows so much Torah, he's a genius, super sharp and intelligent. I know, I know, don't get me wrong, I admire that, but I need someone with a degree. Why worry about making a living? Oh, don't worry, he comes from a very wealthy family. They have many, many millions waiting for you. After you get married, you're gonna get a house, you're gonna get a car, you're gonna have a maid, everything will be done for you. Don't worry about money. She still want a degree. Brainwash. Brainwash. Sometimes it's her foolish parents. Sometimes they're foolish teachers. Sometimes the movies she watch. Sometimes it's peer pressure, you know, friends, this, wow, doesn't it? It's about body, you say. It's primitive. "Ah, I'm gonna marry a doctor." "Who are you gonna marry?" "My friend." "Ah, he's so fanatic." It's overrated. I wanna vomit when I hear this nonsense. Why are they buying his degree? That he's gonna be an infidel and learn all the heresy in the university? That's what you admire? If you only knew how many tens of thousands of boys and girls, their soul was destroyed completely in college and universities, you would think a million times before you send your kids to those places. Just thousands of intermarriage cases you have in universities every year. Thousands, even in New York alone. There's not a day I don't get at least one case, sometimes 3 or 4. Rabbi, can you help us out? Our son is in this university, met this goyah, now he told us he wants to get married. Wow, he made her pregnant. Did she do this? She ran away with a Mexican guy. She ran away with a German guy. She went here, she met this guy. She did— I don't know where to start. What do you think? It's all post-focus? And you break the relationship. That's the cause of academic. The degree may cause you to lose your soul for eternity. And what would you do with the degree? You make less than an Uber driver. That's really the truth. Most people with degrees make less than barbers. [Speaker] Maybe private locutor. [Speaker] Go ask barbers how much they make. Go ask people with degree, you're gonna find that it's more or less the same. And the barber has a great degree by moving his fingers like this and the machine. He also has a degree. But he makes more money than you. I will never forget that a dentist cried to me that he works like a slave and makes $90,000 and after taxes he's left with $60-something and he cannot afford to send his kids to yeshiva. And he said, you know how hard I work all day, bend down like this, smell people's mouth, drill people's jaw, screaming, pushing. And that's after 10 years of learning in school to be able to drill in some teeth of all kinds of antisemites and Jew haters. And I have to take away their pain from them. And what do I make? Less than a taxi driver. Back then there was no Uber. There was yellow cab. Reality! That part people like to ignore. They would like to focus on the one or two great doctors who make millions, or the great doctors who knows what, or some engineer that makes fortune. But for every one that makes fortune, there is a thousand who barely ever work, bichlat. A job. They don't have a job. So, Sarah Schneer saw that we have a big problem. What's the problem? No girl wants to marry a yeshiva boy. No one. All the boys in yeshivot do not get married. Thousands. 24, 26, 28, 30, 35. Nobody gets married. All girls want rotten university wicked guys. That's what happened with the brainwash of the Haskalah movement. So what's gonna be? So she said, we gotta put an end to it. Rav Mordechai Mann, Zatzal, speaking about Mir Yeshiva, I believe it was Mir Yehuda before he came to America and to Israel. There were boys in their 30s, 35, 40, many sitting in yeshiva without marriage. When he arrived there 23 years old, he didn't even consider going out on shiddukhim. Wasn't even crossing his mind that there's such an option. Just like, you know, you have a bar mitzvah guy that you ask him, do you want to go to shidduch? Well, you know, man, I'm 13. Talk to me in 7 years. I'm 23. I don't have a chance to get married in the next 10 years. I might as well sit and learn. There's no chance to find a woman. Sarah Schneeray decided to open Beit Yaakov. She saved the world. If you really think about it. To the point now that today someone that is not Ben Tova cannot find Shidduch. And I'm a witness to it. Do you know how many good guys that work and learn? They learn every day 2-3 hours, but they work. They cannot find Shidduch. As soon as you see on the resume that they're also working, right away 90% 100% of the shiduchim falls down, especially in Israel. I'm not talking modern. Modern, they want someone who walk. Same story like before. Talking real religious girls. They offer her any shiduch can think of. If he's thinking to go to walk in the future, the shiduch is finished before it started. Nothing to talk about. You have girls from Bnei Yaakov today, I look at my daughter and her friends, even if a guy has a WhatsApp, they don't want to consider him klal to date. Just the fact he has a phone with WhatsApp, nothing to talk about. If he left yeshiva for a while, work, and went back to yeshiva, they don't want to hear about it. It's not stable. Why? He's gonna do it again. That's really the reality today. There's so many choices. Yeah, they didn't know that. There's a lot of very religious girls from very religious homes who only want Bentoyva. But you know what? Rav Osheshiva told me something very clever a week ago. Very clever. What did he tell me? He said, I wanted to set up one of the girls who work for my team in Israel, in Zikuy Yehuda. She makes videos and flyers. She works half a day in the kindergarten of religious boys, kids, 3, 4 years old. And the rest of the day she does kiruv, publishing all kinds of things. So she's very religious, she's 28 years old. We have a guy in a yeshiva, 33, 34, perfect, the same nationality, both of them same height, both of them tzaddikim. I thought it's he could be a very good shiduch. I asked her to send her shiduch resume. I told him, make one for yourself. I did all the work even though I don't have time to do shiduchim. This is the guy you see every day. Okay. After everything, the Rosh Yeshiva told me, okay, I'm gonna have to call and ask some questions. Can you give me a Rebbe Tzadok? I said, no, sir. Give him the number. He called that woman. And he asked her, does she want a ben Torah who would sit and learn for the rest of his life? The Rebbetzin said, she considers either that or someone who works and learns. Whatever Hashem brings her. Sounds like a good answer. If somebody that only learns, she's taking it. If someone who learns and works, She will also take it. She's 28, she doesn't have time to waste. When I heard it, I didn't see any serious problem over here. Just when you think you know everything, there's always more to learn from people that are more experienced. I sent it to Rashi Shiba and he said to me, I have a rule by me, it's a genius rule. He said, listen, when the girl say, If he's learning, fine. If he's learning and working, also fine. She can never marry a bentora that learns full-time. I said, why? She's willing to marry a bentora. She said, only for 2, 3 months she will survive, but then after that she won't be able to survive. To marry a bentora, you need a girl that comes with demands. I do not want you unless you commit to learn all your life. That's the only girl that can be with a bentorah. And not always, sometimes they may change their mind later on. If a girl say, "If he learns fine, if he goes to work fine," she's not for bentorah. Genius. He say, "I tell the bachurim over here when they go on a date to ask the girl, 'Right now I'm learning for few years in yeshiva.'" If in a year or two I will go to work, would you mind? If she said, no, if you go to work, you know, I will be okay with that as long as you learn every day something, she's not for you. She will not be able to keep up with a mentor. But if she said, what? God forbid, you're gonna leave the Torah and go to work? No, I'm not interested. The next day you're gonna get a call, she is calling it off. That's the girl that you have to run and give your life for her. Grab her. Of course, if you like her and everything. Why? She's willing to walk, to support, to live in poverty, everything for bento. Now you have a chance. If she says, what comes, comes. She doesn't understand what bento is. 2 months later she's gonna start to complain, "I'm sorry, I'm alone, it's hard for me, I cannot afford this, we're living in a small apartment." She's another Ben Torah. This is very brilliant. Why? Because it's called reverse psychology. Tell her, "Listen, one day I'm gonna go to work." He has no plan to go to work. He's testing her. "If I go to work, you would be fine with that?" Oh yeah, oh yeah, marry someone else. Why? Because if it's so easy for you that I'm gonna give up the Torah, that means you don't understand the value of a Ben Torah. Because it's similar to someone who has a job right now, he collects diamonds. Every day 100 diamonds goes to his account. And he said to him, one day if I will leave the diamond and be a shoeshine in the subway, would you care? Oh no, you wanna be a shoeshine? I'm fine with that. That means she doesn't understand the value of diamonds, right? If he collects diamonds right now and he tells her, I'm planning to leave the diamonds and go and shine people's shoes on the subway for $5 a person. And she said, I'm fine with that. Right away you know that she doesn't understand what diamonds mean. A woman that understands diamonds, she would want to replace diamonds with shoe shine? Person that loves money would replace money with $5? No. Person that loves diamonds would replace diamonds with shoe shine? No. Unless he doesn't know what diamonds are. He never saw it, he doesn't understand the value of it. Someone who knows the value of Torah will never ever consider she doesn't want to see there a husband that is only part-time learning Torah. That's, you should know the truth. I know some of you think, "Oh, what kind of level he's talking to us? We're not in this league. What? We barely learn an hour a day. We don't even learn an hour a week. So what, we're never gonna get married?" You will get married to a modern girl who wants to go to the mall and watch soap operas all day. And do her nails and do her hair every 2 minutes and this and that, and that's what you're gonna have to live with. And if a girl doesn't want a Ben Torah, who is she gonna get? Who is she gonna get? A guy with tight pants attached to his leg like leggings and a blow-up all the way up to the ceiling, and everywhere he goes is a radar to check what the girl's going there. What do you think you're gonna get? Someone who is not all the way in the Torah, you expect him to be some kind of a Baba Salee? I finish with a story. The Ibn Ezra lived 750 years ago. Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra, one of the commentators on the Torah. A revolutionary, very brave. Usually the commentary, they don't move an inch from the words of Chazal or the Midrashim. Rashi is 90% Midrashim, Marah. Brilliant, but it sticks to the previous text. Ibn Ezra has this courage to make his own interpretation from time to time. You need serious shoulders for that. There was a case in his time, people came to the Bedouin. They walked on the way and a hungry Jew came and asked for some food. They agreed to share with him the food. The three of them sat on the floor with a blanket there and started to eat. First guy took out from his bag two loaves of bread and the second one took 3 loaves of bread. They cut each bread to 3 pieces and they all ate equally, right? So the first one had 2 pieces of bread, he cut it to 3/3, so he had 6/3. Second one has 3, 3 times 3/3, 9, together 15 pieces of bread. Each one of them took 5. After they finished the meal, the poor Jew got up and he said to them, thank you so much, you revived me. I'm not really poor, I just was stuck here with no money and I didn't know what to eat, but I'm very rich. I would like to compensate you for the kindness best guess that you have. He took out 5 coins of gold, put it on the floor over there and said, please divide it between you. They left. Now they are fighting. The one with the 3 loaves of bread said, I brought 3, that means I have to get 3 gold coins. You brought 2, you should get 2. The other one says, I'm sorry, absolutely I disagree. We share the bread equally, we will share the coins equally. 2 and a half to you and 2 and a half to me. What do you think? Who's right? They're both stupid. Especially the one that bought 3 pieces of bread, he's extra stupid. Stupid. Why? He wanted to take 3 breads and to give the other guy 2. The other one is just a greedy thief. He brought 2 and he wants to take half. That's obviously not fair. I brought 3, you brought 2, and you want to take— I brought 30,000 into the business, you brought 20,000. I have 60% of the business, the stockholder, and you have 40%. Why would we split 50/50 unless we made a certain arrangement that you work more or whatever? But if it's same job, same everything, I bought 60% of the company as a starting point. So he's offering 50/50, he wants to take advantage. But the one who gave 3, he suggests that he should take 3 and the other one should take 2. So he wants to take 60% from the 5 coins and he wants to give 40% to the other guy. That looks like a fair share, no? Even Ezra told him, no, you're also wrong. Why? And this is what he said. Each one of you had 5, right? He had 2 pieces of bread, he divided it to 6. He had 5 of it. So how much he contributed to the contribute to the pool? 1. You had 3, you cut it to 9 pieces, you ate 5. How much you contributed to the pool? 4. So you have to get 80% and he has to get 20%. You take 4 coins and he take 1 coin. That's the division of the Torah. Even the guy who gave 3 did not know how to calculate. Why do I tell you this story? The Ibn Ezra, after he answered them everything, he said to them, "Let me ask you a question. If the calculation looks so simple and you did not know how to divide it yourself, do you want to understand Hashem's action?" Something in kindergarten, in level, you don't understand. And you have questions about Hashem, why this, why that, how come? That's, Rabbotai, one of the secrets of life. What's the secret? The secret is that We assume that we understand a large part of what Hashem does. In reality, even if you know a lot of Torah, at best case scenario ever, maybe you will understand 1%. The genius in the Torah, you know a lot of Gemara and Ashkafah and Halacha, and you know why Hashem does, and you know all the secrets. All the secrets of the Torah and all the stories and the reincarnation and the Kabbalah, they still don't know even 1%. So if the biggest Chacham finally reached 1%, everybody else knows 0%. Nothing. The question is, what's worse? To know 1% or not to know anything? Depends. If you know 1% and you think I'm God, I know everything, that's the most dangerous thing. Better not to know anything. When you don't know anything, you know you don't know. So you don't try to claim that you know and you're not doing things based on your own understanding because you understand you don't have any knowledge. But if you have a partial knowledge and you already think I'm a big ha, That's when the tragedy begins. Knowing half of the truth sometimes is worse than not knowing at all. When you don't know, you don't know what to do. When you think you know, that could be dangerous. And I see it all the time. You know, we have an example of greed. In the Parasha? Greed. Who are the two greedy people that we have in the Parasha? One is Ephron HaChitti and one is Lavan HaArami. Both of them in the same chapter. Avraham comes to buy, "Me'arata machpelah in Hebron from Ephron HaChitti." He said to him, "Ah, between two lovers like us, the goy say to Avraham, what 400 coins? Avraham will check him, the Steipler, the holy Steipler, the father of Avraham Kamievsky, calculated the currency rate. 400 coins back then equal to 80 times more more than the value of Merata Machpela? 80 times more. Meaning the value of Merata Machpela at that time, remember today you see a big building with bricks, this was built later on, it was only land. The value of the land was 5 coins. And he wants to charge 400. And he said to Abraham, ah, take it for free. Ah, between me and you, what's 400? I don't get it. What's going on over here? First question is, as greedy as you are, there's a limit how much chutzpah you can have. You have a building here in Queens worth a million dollars, you're asking for $80 million? Who's gonna blow up? When finally someone showed up, you said to him, come on, what's, between me and you, what's $80 million for a house here in What's 80 million? And right away takes his checkbook, 80 million it is. Do you understand what's going on over here or no? Narcissist. Tell me, Avraham Avinu was a smart person or a foolish person? What was he? Very smart. The smartest in the world. He recognized Hashem from a young age. He was influential, he was charismatic, he was rich, he had to be smart. We can see. How all of a sudden in business he is so naive? What's going on over here? How did he agree to pay so much? And how come this Ephron, the crook, say to Abraham, "You are the president of God among us. Here is the cave." Take, it's yours. It's honor for me, you want it. Right away he said, but 400 coins between me and you, what is it? Lovers like us. Where exactly is the love? I don't understand, it just meant. Avraham came, he asked people, do you know who owns this place here, this guy Foham? Take me to him. Come, I want to bury my wife over here. And all of a sudden, oh, lovers like you and me. What kind of lovers? Did you ever ask yourself these questions? Or you just read the parasha like it's a newspaper? The answer to this mystery is tomorrow at 8 PM in 2286 Coney Island Avenue between S&T and Brooklyn. 8 PM. We will continue the lecture from where we just stopped.