Parashat Yitro: How An Ex-Idol Worshiper Became Big Rabbi

0:00Thank you for coming. We have a lot of good news to start off. First off, obviously, it's a very interesting parasha, Parashat Yitro. We'll have a lot of chiddushim, a lot of different things that are relevant to life. Aside from that... some good news. We had, since we started publicizing the shiurim, since the shiurim had been publicized on Rabbi Mizrachi's Facebook page, and also on Netiv, netiv.org, I think it is. And also I found out a few other places published them without even knowing, so, Baruch Hashem, it's getting popular, especially since we made those short clips. So, subscribers have gone up a lot in the the group that I have on Facebook, I think, has almost 2,700 people, and the YouTube subscribers went up maybe like 50% in the last week. The reason I'm even telling you all this is because, you know, I know a little bit about technology, but I'm not considered tech-savvy. So I know that the other day, I looked at my messages.

1:07is because, you know, I know a little bit about technology, but I'm not considered tech-savvy. So I know that the other day, I looked at my messages. Somebody that I don't know sends me a message, and Facebook asks me if I want to accept his message or not. So I press accept, and then I read the message. Nice message, compliments, all types of nice things. Questions. But then on the bottom of it, in very, very small print, it asks me, do you want to see... I think it's like some type of other message, filtered, filtered messages. I've never seen this thing before. So I press, okay, fine, see filtered messages. All of a sudden, I have hundreds and hundreds of emails and texts that people have been sending me. with questions about Torah, asking for different books, and different questions about conversion, different questions about different things, and Baruch Hashem, I didn't know I have all these people, because again, I guess I didn't know this thing is even available, but it's really interesting that I found out at that time, because right now is a very, very critical time for Am Yisrael. We have to do as much as possible to learn from this parasha. We're going to do as much as possible to learn from Yitro. Yitro got a parasha in the Torah named after him. And it's a big deal. It's a very, very big deal. You don't see my name in there. You don't see your name in there. You don't see anybody else's name in there that's not somebody that's very, very significant.

2:24which we're going to learn from this parasha. We're going to do as much as possible to learn from Yitro. Yitro got a parasha in the Torah named after him. And it's a big deal. It's a very, very big deal. You don't see my name in there. You don't see your name in there. You don't see anybody else's name in there that's not someone very, very significant. he actually not only has a parasha that talks a lot about him, but on top of it, it specifically mentions his name, and on top of it, it's one of the most critical parshiot in the entire Torah, where even though every parasha and every single word is the same in the Torah, but as far as in our level, you see that this parasha, what does it have in it? The Ten Commandments.

3:25Now, the question is, who is Yitro? Who is Yitro? Chazal say that Yitro had seven names. Seven names mentioned in the Torah by Yitro: Reuel, Yeter, Yitro, which in English is Jethro, Chovav, Chever, Keni, and Putiel. Those were the seven names that he had. I mentioned in the Torah and the Tanakh. But nonetheless, Yitro was Moshe Rabbeinu's father-in-law. Moshe Rabbeinu, after, if you remember in the previous shiurim, Moshe Rabbeinu, after he ran away from Egypt, where the Paroh tried to kill him, went to Cush, Then, after 40 years in Cush, he went to Midian, saved a group of young women from being attacked by these Midianite resha'im, and those girls ended up being Yitro's daughters. Yitro, before that day, was the kohen.

4:53of Midian. He was the number one person in Midian. So, you ask yourself: How is it that he thought he was such an important person that somebody would dare to attack his daughters? You don't see anybody going to attack, you know, the President of the United States' daughter. You don't see anybody attacking, you know, other important people's daughters. Usually, if they want to kidnap them, it's for money, for ransom. But in this case, they actually tried to kill him. They actually tried to kill the daughters. So that's one question. How could they dare go after his daughters? The second question is, if Yitro was a pope, an idol worshipper, how could Moshe Rabbeinu marry his daughter? Moshe was a tzaddik. Moshe was a Jew.

5:59So the first thing we need to know is that Tzipporah converted. Before Matan Torah, before we got the Torah and the official written and oral Torah, we had the oral Torah since creation, and we had some things that were written, but nonetheless, we had the oral tradition all the way from Adam HaRishon. And the key to conversion in those days was really to believe in monotheism, to believe in one God, not believe in idol worship. So conversion was a much easier process than it is today. She converted, she already had to obey and comply with all of the laws, not only the Noahide laws, but also special laws that the Jews had, or the Israelites had, which is, we see that she saved Moshe Rabbeinu's life. The key to conversion in those days was really to believe in monotheism, to believe in one God, and not believe in idol worship. So conversion was a much easier process than it is today. She converted, and she already had to obey and comply with all of the laws, not only the Noahide laws, but also special laws that the Jews had, or the Israelites had, which is, we see that she saved Moshe Rabbeinu's life by giving the Brit Milah to our son. So we already know that they added Brit Milah because Brit Milah is not a Noahide law. Right. People that are not Jewish, they don't have to do Brit Milah. But she was already doing it. So we already know that she obviously was more than just a Noahide. Now the reason why they attacked her and they attacked the daughters of Yitro is because Yitro...

7:22was not only, he was a pope for many, many years, in every different type of idol worship. Every single type of idol worship, he would constantly find new idol worship, you know, look into it, look into it, look into it, eventually realize that it's fake, it's bubkes, it's nothing, and move to something else, and try something else, and then try something else, and then try something else. So I heard this actually from Rabbi Nissim Yagen, Zekher Tzadik Livracha. is that you can actually learn a lot of Mussar from Yitro. Yitro searched for the truth his whole life. The only reason he was changing from idol worship to idol worship was not because he thought, "Listen, I'm going to pray to this bottle, and then next week I'm going to get bored of the bottle. I'll pray to the tea, and then next week I'll pray to the book." No, he... Each time he thought it was real. He found out it was fake, he changed. He found out that it was fake, and he changed. And again changed, and again changed, and again changed, and again changed. Meaning that his whole life, he was searching for the truth. His whole life, he was searching for the truth, and never found it. But right before,

8:52The Midianites attacked his daughters. He quit his job. He said, "Listen, I'm a pope, and I have the most important position. But I have the most important position in something fake. You are all worshipping idols. It's nonsense. It's fake. This is not real. I have to find something real." So, for the truth, he was willing to lose everything. So they made a complete joke out of him. He lost all of his money. They wanted to kill his daughters. They attacked him. He went through a lot of balagan for what? Just looking for the truth. Just to find the truth. So even though he got to it by idol worship, he was still searching for the truth. And this is one of the obligations of every single Jew and non-Jew in the world. You are obligated to find the truth. There's no such thing. as, oh, I didn't know I was born into a secular family, I was born into a chiloni family, so it's not my fault. They'll consider that in Shamayim. Nothing is farther from the truth about that. Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, they asked him, how is it

10:14What's going to happen to people that are not keeping mitzvot? Because they were born into a non-religious house. You know, today, there's some type of disease. People are infected with lies, and they try to give themselves more and more lies to give themselves an excuse to continue their lives. And unfortunately, there's a disease within Judaism itself where people are saying it's okay. Even people, I'm talking about people that, you know, wear kippot and have beards and all of that stuff. No, no, no. You know, poor guy, he doesn't know Judaism. So everyone that doesn't keep mitzvot is excused. You have whole organizations, huge organizations, without mentioning names, where they literally believe, and I know this from experience, I'm not telling you just from my own personal experience, I actually had a whole debate with a rabbi. from there, and he wrote to me several times, "Everyone, everyone is excused. No one needs to do as long as they give some. They could violate Shabbat. They could marry non-Jews. Whatever you want, just give some." This is not only a lie; it's outright kefirah. It's outright heresy against Hashem.

11:38It's outright becoming part of the Erev Rav. You know, Chazal told us that at the end of days, our biggest battle is not going to be with the Goyim. Our biggest battle is going to be with the Erev Rav, which is Jews. Jews within us. But not just regular Jews. Because part of the Erev Rav is actually religious people. They look religious. You know, they look religious. They're not really religious. You know, you can't be religious and tell people you can violate Shabbat. You can't be religious and have Yirat Shamayim and tell people, listen, it's okay to eat Chazir on Yom Kippur. You can't be religious. You can look religious, you can write a book if you want, you can have a whole synagogue if you want, named after you, whatever you want. It still doesn't mean anything. So I'm telling you that right now there's a very, very big disease where people somehow are being led to believe that it's okay to continue sinning. So forget about my opinion. My opinion doesn't matter. There's much, much greater people than I am. In the past, today, Rav Wasserman, I hope, maybe one day I could be equivalent to his shoe. So what am I going to do? They ask him, what happens to all of these people that don't keep anything? Are they going to get punished? Of course they're going to get punished. They're going to burn in Gehinnom.

13:04No, no, no, but they were born into a secular family. They don't know. You know, the father, the mother, they don't keep Shabbat. They send them to public school. It's not their fault. The guy is 20 years old. He's never had Judaism in his life. So, Rav Wasserman, you know, he wasn't afraid of telling the truth, though, Hashem. I wish there were many more like him. And he says... Let me show you, let me give you a parable of what it's compared to. Imagine someone going in the middle of the desert, walking around the middle of the desert. In the desert, there's nothing, just sand and sand and sand and sand, and usually people don't go there unless you're a professional who goes into the desert. But imagine this one person, all of a sudden, in the middle of the desert, he finds a huge castle, beautiful. He doesn't see anybody.

14:05He goes inside. Everything is clean, in place, and perfect. There's nobody there, though. He doesn't see anybody. He sees, oh, it’s a kitchen. Wow. He goes into the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator. Everything is fresh. Fresh fruit. Fresh food. Everything you can imagine is in there. Something unbelievable. So he starts eating. Then he looks to the right. He sees another room. He goes into the other room. It’s full of diamonds. Diamonds and jewels. He starts taking them and putting them in his pocket. All of a sudden, the alarm goes off. The cops come, they arrest him, and bring him in front of the judge. "So what's your excuse?" the judge asked him. "How dare you rob the castle?" He goes, "No, I didn't try to rob the castle. I didn't think anybody owns it. I didn't think anybody owns it."

15:05Now, do you know any judge in the world that will believe such a nonsensical excuse? Do you know any judge that believes something like that? I don't know anybody that believes that. The judge is going to tell him, "Wait, so you're telling me that you went in the middle of the desert, there's nothing else, you find the castle, in the castle everything is clean, everything is neat, there's fresh fruit, there's fresh food, there are diamonds, everything is perfect. It's just there by itself? Nobody owns it? It just magically appeared?" From nothing? Who's going to buy that excuse? So Rav Wasserman says, this is what a secular person is. Yom HaDin is going to come, and they're going to ask him, "So how come you didn't keep Shabbat?" He says, "I didn't know." "How come you didn't keep Torah and mitzvot?" "I didn't know." "How come you didn't ask who created the world?" "I thought it was just there."

16:07I thought that we came from monkeys. I thought the world was there forever. It was always here. I believed in science. You really think that everything just came from nothing? Put the Torah aside. We haven't gotten to Torah. Torah is level two. Let's go to level one. Work with me on level one. You have a globe that's placed in a perfect, precise place where it cannot be anywhere else in the entire cosmos, in the entire universe. The Earth cannot exist if it goes any other way in the entire universe, which is gigantic; it's endless. It cannot exist. Mankind cannot exist anywhere else other than exactly where we are. Earth cannot exist anywhere else. Inside the Earth, you have human beings, you have animals. Every animal knows exactly how to defend itself, how to eat, how to function. You have the one major resource that we need in the world, which is what? What do we need more than anything else in the world to survive? Water. Water. Water.

17:18What do we have more than anything else? Water. Air and water. You have an unlimited supply of air. Nobody here went outside and said, "I can't breathe today," right? Nobody had a problem with that, right? Baruch Hashem, right? Because we have air. We have no problem with air. It's balanced. What about the ocean? Does anybody have any idea how much ocean we have in the world? 72% of the globe is water. 72%. That means that only 28% of the world is land where we live. So the fact that we need water so much, Hashem gave us an abundance of it. And on top of it, there's more water coming from space. If you remember, I told you when I was doing, the meteors that melt, the water comes from space, and that's actually the blessed rain. So you have so much, all of this precision, something exact. If anything was 1% different, nothing would exist. If the oxygen that we have, if there was one more oxygen or one less hydrogen in the water, it wouldn't be water anymore. It would be something else. If the level of air that we have, if the carbon dioxide was slightly higher, just one tiny, tiny little speck higher, we wouldn't be able to breathe. One lower? Thank you.

18:45You'd light a match, and the whole world would explode. I'm talking about one degree. Something small. Not a lot. Not 50%, not 100%, not 500%. Tiny, small, small. Everything is so precise, and you think it came from nothing? I'm sorry. The Judge up there is much smarter than the judge over here. Even the judge over here is not going to fall for that. You want the Judge up there to fall for that? So, how do the scientists actually view it? How? Scientists? The scientists, what is their view of it? Most scientists today, most of the major scientists in the world, have come to the conclusion that there has to be a Creator to the world. I'm not saying that they believe in the Torah yet. Many scientists do, and many scientists have done teshuva over the last couple of decades. ...famous scientists, have done teshuva, and have, you know... So they realize there is something... But even the major scientists, non-Jewish, Jewish, across the world, in general, it's pretty much unanimous, nearly unanimous, I would say, or at least a large majority of major scientists today are no longer atheists, meaning that they believe there has to be some form of intelligent design.

20:10some type of creator. You want to call it Hashem, you want to call it whatever you want to call it, but there has to be a creator. Why? Because regardless of how much science you have, regardless of whether you want to believe that we had evolution and we all came from monkeys and now we're human beings, or you want to believe that everything started with a big bang and there was one molecule and then it went through the process of mitosis and it split into two and then again into another and so on and so on and so on. Eventually, Nirel is here. Even if you want to believe that, which is foolish, but people believe it. What are you going to do? They believe it. Even if you want to believe that, you still cannot explain where the first one came from. The first cell. The first cell that started everything. The first cell that exploded. and made the Big Bang. Where did it come from? Something had to create it. Why? Because we know for sure that based on all the knowledge that we have, it cannot be that something comes from nothing. There's no such thing. The only time that that's happened is if you believe in G-d. G-d created everything from nothing. Science cannot have anything created from nothing. All the inventions we have

21:30are based on pre-existing knowledge and technology. It cannot come from nothing. So when someone is saying, "Listen, I don't believe in anything and I expect that it's going to be okay when I get to Shamayim," Chazal is telling us that it's a big mistake. Yitro, Yitro was the head of idol worship, and now he decided to leave it, and then leave another one, and leave another one, and leave another one. In the beginning of this parasha, we learn the reason why Yitro was so special and so important, that not only is there a parasha written about him, Not only is it the same parasha that contains the Ten Commandments, not only was he the father-in-law of Moshe Rabbeinu, just a regular guy, but on top of it, in the very first page, first few verses, the Midrashim say, Hashem asked Moshe Rabbeinu for a favor.

22:50Please go and welcome Yitro and give him a lot of kavod. What's the program? This is in the beginning. We'll get to it in a second. We're going to get to it. Why? So in the beginning it says, this is Parashat Yitro, 18:1. 18:1, chapter 18:1. So, in Exodus. Exodus or Shemot. So in the beginning it says, Yitro, the minister of Midian, the father-in-law of Moshe, heard everything that God did to Moshe and to Israel, His people, that Hashem had taken Israel out of Egypt. In this first sentence, we have the secret. So Yitro became interested because, like you said, he was idling this and this and this until he came to Moshe. And he said, "Wow, this is something I have to look into because this is somebody mighty that took all these people, this amount of people."

24:10which I never saw before. Why do you understand from this? Only that he told them the story, what happened. And also he saved his daughters. Alright, so hold on, hold on, we haven't got it. The next verse says, וַיִּקַּח יִתְרוֹ חֹתֵן מֹשֶׁה אֶת צִפֹּרָה אֵשֶׁת מֹשֶׁה אַחַר שִׁלּוּחֶיהָ, שִׁלּוּחֶיהָ, וְאֵת שְׁנֵי בָנֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר שֵׁם הָאֶחָד גֵּרְשֹׁם, It says that Yitro, the father-in-law of Moshe, took Tzipporah, the wife of Moshe, after she had been sent away. Why was she sent away? Because originally she came with Moshe to Egypt. But as soon as Moshe got to Egypt, he met with his brother Aharon. And Aharon said, "Listen, our people are already suffering in Egypt as slaves. Why are you bringing your family? You want to add more to the list? Send them back with your kids. You have two kids, two little babies. One of them just had a brit milah. At the end, they just had a brit milah during the journey." So he sent them back. So he said, while he was sent away, she was sent away at that point. But thanks to her support, she reminded him. Before she was sent away, she saved Moshe's life.

25:27and her two sons, of whom one was named Gershom, for he had said, "I was a sojourner in a strange land." Why did he name his son Gershom? Because Moshe wanted to remind himself, "I lived in a place that I don't really belong to, whether it was Egypt, or it was Midian, or it was Cush. That's not my country. That's not my people. My people are Am Yisrael. And I wanted to make sure that I always remember that." That's why I named my son Gershom. I was a stranger in a strange land. Why? You have to remember where you came from. If you don't remember where you came from, you don't know where you're going. And the name of the other was Eliezer, for the God of my father came to my aid, and He saved me from the sword of Pharaoh. What sword of Pharaoh? What sword of Pharaoh? After Moshe killed the Egyptian, they told on him. Pharaoh tried to cut off Moshe's head. Right, and turn it to stone. So that's the source of that. Vayetze Moshe likrat chotno vayishtachu vayishak lo.

26:59So he says, Yitro came. Yitro is again mentioned as the father-in-law of Moshe. He's getting a big kavod being known as the father-in-law of Moshe. Moshe at this point is the leader of the world. Came to Moshe with his son and his wife to the wilderness. where he was encamped by the mountain of God, this is Har Sinai, and Yitro says to Moses, "Ah, your father-in-law, Yitro, has come to you with your wife and her two sons with her." Chazal is telling us here, it's really not Yitro talking to Moshe; he's talking to somebody else to tell Moshe, that, "Listen, I'm his father-in-law. If he's too important to meet me, at least tell him that I came here with his wife and his two sons, so he should at least come see them, if he doesn't want to see me." But then you see in verse number 7, Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and he prostrated himself and kissed him. Each inquired about the other's well-being, and then they came to the tent. And the year after this, he tells them, you know, each exchanged stories, what happened, and, you know, Moshe tells all the details of what happened in Mitzrayim, the miracles from Hashem, because even though Yitro,

28:19...heard about what happened in Mitzrayim, he heard about what happened at Yam Suf, where Hashem split the sea, he heard about the nation of Amalek attacking us, and Hashem defeating them, and by the way, those two things were the ones that moved him. But also, Hashem told Moshe to give attention to it all. Okay, yes, but the question is why? Because he was worshipping different idols, but he wanted to find the right connection to Him. You're on the right direction. So I'm going to tell you exactly why. The secret here, I told you, I heard a nice drasha, amazing, from Rav Nissim again. He mentioned something about this. It's mentioned constantly in the parasha also, so we'll go over it a few times. But the whole secret to the significance of Yitro is in the first word. Vayishma. Yitro heard. What does it mean? Yishma. That means that one time, one time, he heard the truth, that's it, he left everything. It's not that he saw it with his own eyes, he went and saw the ten plagues. He used to be one of the three major servants of

29:46of generals of Pharaoh. He didn't see what happened in Egypt. He left. He ran away before that. He was already set. He was already rich. He was already important in Midian for many years. He left everything. Why? He heard about Hashem making miracles in Egypt, splitting the sea, and then defeating the nation of Amalek. In Egypt, he says, okay, listen, originally I thought He's making miracles in Egypt. Maybe it's just Hashem that the Jews believe in. Maybe He's just punishing the Egyptians for being wicked. It doesn't necessarily mean that He's the only one or the most powerful one. Then, when He split the sea, I realized this Hashem is above nature. But when He beat the nation of Amalek, which was a very strong nation, much more powerful than the nation of Israel looked like. I mean, we were all slaves. We weren't exactly mercenaries and soldiers. When he beat the nation of Amalek that attacked us from behind, then I knew that Hashem is specifically looking at every small little detail of this nation. He even cares about Netilat Yadayim.

31:09He even cares about Netilat Yadayim. Why? Because He went and got involved in a war that really, I mean, He didn't have to get involved in. But He only heard it once. That's it. He had to hear it one time. Somebody told Him. He heard. The whole world heard. The whole world heard what happened to Egypt. The nation of Amalek also heard. It came from Lot. The nation of Amalek also heard what happened in Egypt. They heard that Moshe destroyed the country with the ten plagues that Hashem gave him power to do. They heard the ocean split. They also heard. But instead of doing teshuva, what did they do? They attacked us. They said, no, no, we're going to go to war with them and their God. And that's why at the end of last week's parashah, it says, Hashem says, at the end of times, we're going to destroy them. We're going to wipe them out completely. This war will be over at the end of times. So you have two choices when you hear the truth. You could be like Amalek and say, no, mikreh, coincidence.

32:20I'll prove that it's wrong. Not only is it a coincidence, I'm going to prove to you that it's a coincidence. I'm going to prove to you that it's not real. I'm going to prove to you that this rabbi is fake, and that rabbi is this, and that rabbi is that, and you know, people that go against the religion, go against Judaism. They make whole Facebook pages and websites just to go anti-religion, anti-Torah. Not only do they not like it, but they're going to go against it, just like Amalek. And the Jews. Who else is it going to be? Somebody could be like Amalek. You heard the same thing. We both. Yitro and Amalek heard the same thing. The secular and the Baal Teshuva, we both heard the same thing. One did Teshuva, one didn't do Teshuva. Yitro heard also once. He didn't say he heard several times. He heard once. One time he heard. One time he heard the truth, that was enough. The Teshuva gave up everything just for the truth.

33:21And for that, Hashem rewarded him eternally in this world and the next. Not only giving him a special son-in-law, a special parashah. But on top of it, he asks the most important person in the world to go out there and give him extra kavod. Now, as soon as Moshe starts going somewhere, Aharon asks, "Where are you going?" "Oh, I'm going to welcome my father-in-law." "Oh, I'm coming also," says Aharon. Aharon's sons, his four sons, see their father and their important uncle. "Where are you going?" "We're going to welcome my father-in-law." They're coming also. As soon as the nation sees the six most important people in the world, going, the whole nation of Israel came and welcomed Yitro. Everyone came. Millions and millions of people came to welcome Yitro. Why? Because Yitro, he heard one time, he did teshuva. That's what we have to ask ourselves. How many times have you heard the truth? How many times have you heard about Shabbat?

34:25How many times have you heard about tefillin? How many times have you heard about middot? How many times have you heard about every single thing we talk about? Actually, on Shabbat, not too many have heard. How many times do we hear the truth? How many times do we need to hear it before we do teshuva? Because when we do it, you can see there's a good example here that Hashem pays in this world and the next. this one and the next. Now, more things about Yitro that are very, very interesting is that Yitro was not only about teshuva, but Yitro and Moshe already had a previous connection. According to the Zohar, I heard this from Rabbi Mizrachi, also Rabbi Anessimi again, and a few other places, Rabbi Frank Kachner as well. Yitro and Moshe were Cain and Abel. Adam HaRishon had two sons originally, and then he had a third son. Cain and Abel. How do we know that they are? This is what the Zohar says. Hevel

35:53was murdered by Cain before he had any time to make any sins, so he was a pure soul. He eventually came back as Noach, and then Noach eventually was a Gilgul that came back to Moshe Rabbeinu, which we talked about in the past. How do we know that Yitro came back as, or was previously, Cain? One of his names is Kaini. And that Cain, that was meaning that he came here to fix the sin of Cain. That was one of his names. Also, the reason why Cain was a very special person that's underestimated is because Cain technically was a prophet. Cain spoke to Hashem. Cain and Abel, they spoke to Hashem. Cain made a korban. ...with things that weren't his top-level merchandise. Abel made it with top-level merchandise. The reason why also you can't, there's something called Shatnez, is because one gave linen and the other one gave wool in his korban, in his sacrifice. And then after that, you know, Hashem rejected Cain's korban. So, and then after that, Cain killed Abel.

37:20So Hashem said, oh, this is the first murder in history, I don't want linen and wool to ever be together again. You're not allowed to wear linen and wool together. So that's why, for example, when you have suits, you have to check the collars, and you have to take it to somebody that checks the entire suit, because some suits have linen and wool together. You're not allowed to do it. If you wear a suit, or any clothes, that have linen and wool together. It's a sin every second you wear it. And usually, the linen and wool is in suits, not just in traditional clothing. It's okay, I don't like suits. So now, Kayin killed him. Why? Because Hashem, he got, instead of, after he saw that Hashem rejected his korban, instead of doing teshuva, what did he do? He got mad. And then he saw his brother had two wives, and he only had one wife, and he ended up killing him. So part of the gilgul, part of what he had to fix during his gilgul, is that since he killed his brother for a woman, he had to give, as he was told, he had to give away a woman. Who did he give? He gave Tziporah to Moshe. He gave back a woman to, technically, Abel, the original soul. So that's one of the things that he had to do.

38:39Moving on, one of the major things that you see here in this parasha, from Yitro, is that after Moshe tells him about these miracles, Moshe... Moses tells his father-in-law everything that Hashem has done to Pharaoh and Egypt for Israel's sake. He gives him all the details. This is actually one of the sources that we find out that anytime you have a miracle that happens to you, you have to publicize it. It's very, very important to publicize miracles. Hashem, when He gives you a miracle, gives it to you in order for you to publicize it. Why? Because it's Kiddush Hashem. So that's exactly what Moshe is doing. He tells Yitro all of these details. And Yitro says, "Now I know that Hashem is greater than all the gods, all this idol worship that I've been involved in, for in every matter in which the Egyptians have conspired against them." So what is he saying here?

40:03Now I know that Hashem is greater. That we understand. Easy. But I know it because of the way He dealt with the Egyptians. What does it mean? I know that He's greater than everyone else because He dealt with the Egyptians measure for measure. They tried drowning the Jewish babies. Hashem in the end drowned them in the ocean. Each one of the plagues, we went over it. Each one of them was measure for measure. Blood was because they didn't let us use the water. The frogs were because they didn't let us sleep. The lice were because they didn't let us shower, so we didn't have good hygiene. And every one of the plagues had measure-for-measure punishment for what the Egyptians did to the Jews. So it shows that Hashem is not just punishing aimlessly without any type of reason. The punishment and the reward are precise, just like the world that He created.

41:05And this is exactly what Yitro saw himself. This is what he paid attention to. When it says that he heard, he didn't just hear a story, "Listen, Hashem made some miracles, okay, I'm converting to a new religion and taking on a bunch of mitzvot that I don't know anything about." He was able to see the Creator through His creation. And this is our responsibility today. No one can see Hashem because Hashem has no body, no likeness of a body, no image, no likeness of an image. It's one of the 13 principles of faith that we repeat every day. But you are still obligated to know that Hashem exists. Not to believe that Hashem exists, but to know. How do you get to a point of knowing, knowledge, actual knowledge, where just like you know that I'm here, or I know that you're here, and you're here, and we're in a house, and so on,

42:06How do you get to knowledge? The only way to get to knowledge, just like Yitro is saying here, was now I know. He didn't say now I believe in Hashem. Now I know. How do you get to knowledge? Through the creation. When you pay attention to the creation and the details, you can find the Creator. So after this, Yitro gets another present. It needs to be memorized. It needs to be remembered forever. We went over it in last year's shiur, the parasha. We won't go over it in too much detail, but there's a lot of interesting things in it. It was on the next day that Moshe sat to judge the people, and the people stood by Moshe from morning until evening. So Moshe is here the next day, After Yitro comes and he's judging, he has lines and lines of people, just like you see that, you know, sometimes you have a famous rabbi, or sometimes a famous person that pretends to be a rabbi, and he has a line of people waiting, hoping for a blessing from this rabbi, and they wait in line for three, four, five hours. Listen, if it's one of the real gedolim, they're all fine.

43:33But if it's some guy that some people believe is going to perform some magic trick, I don't know why people do that. You have a much easier and faster and more assured way of getting your prayers answered, which is to pray to G-d. You don't need a middleman. But anyway, all of these people are waiting for Moshe Rabbeinu. And this is unbearable for Yitro. He sees this. You know, Yitro is a savvy guy. He's not a fool. A savvy guy. He starts to see lines of people waiting for Moshe from morning to night. One guy is asking for a bracha. Please, we need to have kids. Another one has a fight with his neighbor. Who's right, who's wrong. He stole my money. No, he stole my money. Mm-hmm. And another guy is like, listen, I want to learn some of these rules that Hashem gave you. I want to learn them. So he says, but you've totally seen this. This is ridiculous. From morning to night, you're just doing this. He says, you're doing something wrong here. This is not good. The father-in-law of Moshe saw everything that he was doing to the people, and he said, what is this that you do to the people?

44:48doing something wrong. This is not good. Vayomer Moshe, and Moses said to his father-in-law, "Because the people come to me to seek G-d. When they have a matter, one comes to me, and I judge between man and his fellow. This is when they have arguments or some business issue. And I make known the decrees of G-d and His teachings." So this last part, where it says, Ve'hoda'ati et chukei ha'Elokim. ve'Torotav. ve'Torotav is a very, very important word where it says he's not making just the knowledge of Hashem, the rules of Hashem. He says it's the rules of Hashem and His Torahs. More than one Torah. So for anyone that, for example, whether it's Christians or the Karaites, not that many of them anymore, or even it's the Muslims, or it's even Jews that don't want to believe in

45:49Oral Torah and Written Torah, this is a very, very good source that you see that when it's mentioned Torah in the Torah, most of the time it says multiple Torahs, not just one Torah, meaning that there's more than one part of the Torah. There's the Written one, which we're reading from right now, and then there's the Oral one, which has been moving from generation to generation, all the way from Moshe Rabbeinu. It's called the Oral Torah. It also says again, a few pesukim after that, in verse 20, So when Yitro is giving advice, he says, "You shall caution them regarding the decrees and the teachings." So again, another way that shows there are multiple Torahs. Now going back to Yitro, Yitro says this is not, this is really not working out here. You're working from day to night. You're with these people. This is a serious problem. You have to listen to me right now. Ata shema bekoli. Heed my voice. Listen to my voice. What is he telling him? Do what I did. I heard the truth once. I did teshuva.

47:09You're making a mistake here. Listen to me also. Don't be a nation that's stubborn and wants to stay with your opinion because you're Mr. Big Shot. Be like me. Even more, be like your own father. Not my own father. Not my own father. Moses' father, Amram. is one of four people that never sinned in history. His whole life never sinned, never once sinned. When Moses' older sister was three years old, this is before Moses was born, she was six years older than Moses. And he sees that the Egyptians have this rule where they're killing all the firstborn babies, the boys. So he makes a decree That's it. No more kids. He leaves his wife. Of course, since he's a tzaddik, though, he leaves his wife. Everybody does the same thing. So the little three-year-old Miriam, she was a prophet, though, not just a three-year-old like today. She's a prophet. She comes to Abba. She says, Abba, your decree is worse than Paro.

48:38If it was us, a three-year-old would say something like that. Tach, you go to your room. How dare you speak to your father like this? But Amram was a tzaddik. He says, why? She says, Paro's decree may or may not come through because he's a rasha. Your decree is going to come through because you're a tzaddik. Paro's decree only affects the boys. Okay, it's a boy, he dies. Maybe. But your decree is everything. It’s boys and girls. No one can be born. It affects both boys and girls. Paro's decree is only in this world. Your decree is eternal. Someone can't come here to fix their soul. They're stuck where they are. It's not good.

49:39Three years old. Amram sees this. He does teshuva on the spot. He heard one time. He did teshuva on the spot. Immediately he married his wife. And how did Hashem reward him? He gave Moshe Rabbeinu. She was six. I'm sorry. She was six years old. He gave Moshe Rabbeinu. So when he heard a rebuke from his own daughter, a little girl. She’s five years old. he did teshuva on the spot. He told her at one time, he did teshuva on the spot. He's telling Moshe, listen, what you're doing is wrong. Shema Bekoli, hear my voice. And this is how you're supposed to structure it. First of all, whatever I tell you, go ask Hashem. If Hashem's okay with it, then you listen to me. So right away, before he even gives him the advice, he tells him, if it's okay with Hashem, you're talking to Hashem, you have to ask Him first. But this is my idea.

50:40make sure, obviously, to convey the matter to Hashem. You shall caution them regarding the decrees of the Torah. Of course, you have to teach them Torah, and you shall make known to them the path in which they should go and the deeds they should do. So Torah comes first. Make sure you tell them how to operate in life. And now this is the part where we discuss the importance of selecting leaders. It really gives you a nice understanding of where we need to get to. He says here in verse 21, "And you shall discern from among the entire people men of accomplishment, God-fearing people, men of truth, people who despise money. And you shall appoint them over the people as leaders of the people at all times."

51:42And it really gives you a nice understanding of where we need to get to. He says here in verse 21, "And you shall discern from among the entire people men of accomplishment, God-fearing people, men of truth, people who despise money. And you shall appoint them over the people as leaders of the people at all times." And on and on and on it continues. These, you have judges. And each one is going to have his own section. There are going to be some leaders of hundreds of people, some leaders of fifties, some leaders of tens. Each group is going to have its own leader. But these leaders need to be special people. You can't just pick any Joe Schmo. They have to be people that are successful. Why successful? because nobody appreciates anyone who doesn't have any money in this world. This is not just in this world. This is not just today in 2016, secular year, or 5777. It's not just now. This is forever. You don't have any money, nobody wants to listen to you. In reality...

52:59This is not exactly a thought that Moshe couldn't figure out, but Hashem gave it to Yitro specifically as a gift, as one of the things he's going to be remembered for. In essence, what Yitro is doing over here is he's inventing the modern judicial system. The judicial system we have right now—lower court, higher court, supreme court—you have the balance of courts, you have police, you have... The whole legal system we have in the world today, where does it come from? From Yitro. He says you have the highest level, which is you. You only deal, Moshe Rabbeinu, you only deal with the important cases that nobody else can deal with. But you can't deal with a, listen, one guy stole a Bazooka gum with a baseball bat from his friend. You can't deal with those people. So you give it to somebody else. Somebody has to deal with them. You can't just leave it alone. It's going to be anarchy. You have to help everyone. But not you. Have different people. The guy that stole a million dollars, you have somebody dealing with him. The guy that overcharged people for five dollars, you have somebody else to deal with them. And so on and so forth.

54:12So, in essence, what Yitro is inventing over here is the modern judicial system we have today. As I said to you many, many times, everything that's any good in the world comes from the Torah. Anything that's any good. Nothing that's good comes from somewhere else. It has to have something that's also in the Torah. So here you have, Yitro is giving us very, very special advice. He's giving Moshe advice, and he's also a trainer in the Torah because it's really for us. He's telling Moshe, if you want to have these leaders, they have to be men of accomplishment. Why? Because nobody appreciates anybody that's broke. That's why in those days, you know, in the old days, they would make a new rabbi, head rabbi would come in, they would make sure that he becomes very rich. Why? Because people are not going to listen to him if he's poor. After that, he's saying, you find successful people, make sure that you have Yirat Shamayim, Yirei Elokim, God-fearing people. After that, you have to make sure they're men of truth. Men of truth. God-fearing people because somebody who is God-fearing is not going to deal with any bribery or illegal things. He's afraid of Hashem.

55:27He's not going to be the guy that parks far away from the shul on Shabbat and then walks to the shul so nobody knows he's driving to shul. He's not going to be that guy. Why? Because he knows that Hashem can see him even if he parks away from the synagogue. He can see behind the trees. He's not going to be that guy. He's going to be the guy that walks to shul even if it's 10 miles if he has to. He has the yirat Shamayim, too. Men of truth. What's men of truth? Men of truth, not just, okay, people that are, say, like the truth, okay, it's very nice. Men of truth means they protect the truth. They cannot tolerate lies. If they see someone is saying Lashon Hara about somebody else, they will not be able to tolerate it. If it's something that's wrong, they're going to defend the truth.

56:27Even if it's not their fight. Why? Because they're defending the truth, especially when it relates to Torah. Somebody asked me a week ago, two weeks ago, why are you bothering with being involved in this whole fight that people have against Rabbi Mizrachi? They're trying to ruin his name, and it's turned out to be a great thing for him because he handled it in an amazing way. And it turned out to be a big Kiddush Hashem. But nonetheless, the resha'im are still there. They're still trying to go against him. And I've been trying to be as involved as possible to contribute to help defend the truth. And there are many, many others that have done a lot of good as well. But the point is, somebody asked me, why do you bother? Why? It's not your fight. It's not your fight. And without hesitation, to me, not that I'm a tzaddik or anything, but to me, I'm just thinking, if it's not my fight, whose fight is it? If defending the truth is not your fight, whose fight is it? That's why you throw a star on your behalf. And sheh emet, you fight for the truth all the time. There's no such thing as it's your fight or not. Everything that's truth is your fight.

57:51When you're defending Torah, it's your fight. It's not just saying, no, let them... No, if you know the truth, and someone is spreading lies, you have to fight. You have to defend the truth. That's what emet is. Emet cannot be bought. And last but not least, it says it's people that despise money. Lema despised money. If they're successful, then they don't really need money. But people sometimes, when they have a lot of money, they want even more. The Gemara says, somebody has a hundred, he wants two hundred. Someone has two hundred, he wants four hundred. The more somebody has, the more he wants. It's a natural human instinct. It's a natural yetzer hara that we have. But he says, people that have money, maybe they're going to be able to control their desire for money by being God-fearing. But if God-fearing is not enough, they need to be men of truth so they can say, listen, I can take this bribe, but wait a minute, if I take this bribe, then I'm really going to be convicting somebody that's innocent. So, if it's men of truth, then good. But if men of truth is not enough, at least you have somebody who despises money. He has a bunch of money, but he doesn't care for money. He gives it away. So, if you have all four of these things, you have good judges. That's what he was suggesting. Later on, in the next few verses, we find out that

59:11Unfortunately, Moshe, even in those days, it says, Moses only found people that had only one of the four qualities: people that have money, people of accomplishment. He didn't find anyone that had money and who had Yirat Shamayim and were men of truth and despised money. He didn't find people that had all of them, even in those days, 3,300 years ago. But nonetheless, what can we learn from him? This is nice, just like we had last week in shiur, I think either here or in Miami; it's a nice roadmap to getting to the ultimate goal of serving and connecting to Hashem. Men of accomplishment doesn't necessarily only have to mean

1:00:14that you succeeded in money. It could also mean that you succeeded in learning some Torah. If you learn one page of Gemara, that's already significantly more than all the money in the world. One page of Gemara. All the money in the world—one page of Gemara is worth more. You learn every day: 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour, two hours—very successful. Rabbi Yisrael from Salant, who was one of the major powerhouses behind the Mussar movement about 150 years ago, maybe a little more. When he was a kid, his rabbi was Rabbi Yosef Zundel from Salant. He lived in the early 1800s.

1:01:15About 200 or so years ago, Rabbi Yisrael from Salant was a little boy going to Yeshiva. Rabbi Yosef Zundel from Salant said, "Learn a lot of Mussar, and you're going to become great. Learn Mussar every day." You know, in those days and today, Mussar was never necessarily a very popular subject for many years. Why? Because it tells people that they're doing something wrong. It obligates you. Also, even people that learn Torah say, okay, I learn, I know how to behave, I'm a calm person, and have some decent middot, but I want to learn something that's more complicated, something that changes my mind completely. builds my brain. It's more mentally stimulating. The beginning of the letter that the Ramchal writes in Mesillat Yesharim, in Path of the Just, in his famous book, is that he said, people that are even Talmidei Chachamim, people that are learning Torah every day, don't learn about Middot, don't learn Mussar. Why? Because they think it's so simple, it's not at their level. But the Vilna Gaon,

1:02:34The Vilna Gaon, who is one of the greatest sages in history, a few hundred years ago, says the whole purpose of creation, the whole purpose of you coming to the world, was to fix your Middot. So then somebody asks him, why is it that fixing your Middot is not part of the 613 Mitzvot that we have? Why isn't there one mitzvah? You have a mitzvah. Say, oh, mitzvah number 612, fix your middot. So actually, I'm sorry, Rabbi Chaim Vital, who is one of the great Talmidim of the Arizal, his main Talmid, gives the answer. He says, there isn't a specific mitzvah to fix your middot. Because in order to do the mitzvot, and the ultimate purpose of all of the mitzvot, is to fix your middot, is to fix your characteristics. The mitzvot that you're doing will fix your characteristics, will fix your traits, will fix your nature. You're not allowed to steal, so you're going to know that this thing doesn't belong to you. You're not allowed to be impatient. You're learning, you're not allowed to say Lashon Hara about people.

1:03:54So you learn that you have to control your speech. The mitzvot that you have, their ultimate purpose is for you to build your character, to fix your middot. That's why there isn't, because technically all of them are for that. It means the same thing. Doing the mitzvot and fixing your middot is the same thing. King Shlomo says... Cling tightly to ethical discipline. Do not let loose. This is guarded carefully, for it is your life. This is in Proverbs 4:13. Fixing your middot is everything. But you can only do it if you learn about it. Fix it every day. So Rabbi Yisrael from Salant, as a little boy, he hears from his rabbi, "Listen, listen to Mussar. Learn about Mussar." He heard it one time One time he heard it, and it changed his life. From that moment on, as a little boy, he started learning Mussar every day. Every day he stuck to Rabbi Zundel. Every day. And eventually, he became a Gadol HaDor. And even had Ruach HaKodesh. From what? Learning Mussar.

1:05:19I heard this story from Rabbi Yisrael again. He says, the influence that Rabbi Yisroel Salanter had is something out of this world. One time he's on a train, and he's sitting next to a businessman, a guy that owns a lot of land, sells wood. Sells wood, so he has a lot of land. Lumber. Lumber. is a lumber company, and he says to him, "What do you do? What are you doing for your future?" "No, no," the lumberjack says, "I'm fine. I have a big company. I have a lot of money." He goes, "No, no, I know that you have, I can tell you have money, that's fine." But he says, what about your real future? Right now, you know, in this world, you have another 50 years left, let's say. But what about the real future? The one that's eternal? I learn Torah, you know, a half hour a day. So Bais HaLevi says, so in this world, that you live in 70, 80, 100 years, you're investing 10, 12 hours a day every day.

1:06:50But for the real world, that's eternal, investing a half hour? How does that make sense? How is your house over here going to help you over there? How much wood can you sell? How much wood do you need? The way he said it is much better than the way I can say it. This lumberjack businessman started crying on the train. My mom started crying. He goes, "You're right, Rabbi." He got off at the next stop, not where he needed to. Why? To go on the next train to go back home. He went back home, sold everything he had, and built 30 yeshivot all over Europe and Russia. 30 yeshivot. Wow. And he spent the rest of his life learning Torah. Learning Torah morning to night. His name was the Saba from Novardok. And he actually wrote a book, Madregat HaAdam. A very, very well-known book.

1:08:12And this is someone that's successful. It says men of accomplishment. Men of accomplishment doesn't necessarily need to be money only. Men of accomplishment, the real accomplishment, depends on what you think is accomplishment. Accomplishment, you have money? Okay, fine. Somebody has 150 million dollars, but they have one day to live. Are they really successful or not? They're accomplished. So if someone is successful, has accomplishments in the Torah, where they've made time for the Torah every day, we're learning from this verse, they can already get to the next level. What is it? God-fearing people. Once you learn Torah, you start realizing, ah, there's a Borei Olam, there's a Creator to the world. Immediately, you start recognizing the Creator through His creation. You have to become scared. It doesn't say you need to get men of accomplishment and then lovers of Hashem. Nowhere does it say you need to find people, special, special people, because they love Hashem. It's rarely mentioned in the Torah about loving Hashem, by the way. Loving Hashem is a higher level than fearing Hashem, don't get me wrong. But you can't love Him without fearing Him first. And fear is an extremely high level. The only way you can get to fearing Hashem is, first of all, you have to learn some Torah.

1:09:37Once you get to a point of level number two, you already have some Yirat Shamayim, then you have a shot at becoming a man of truth. You have a shot at becoming a man of truth. Why? Because you have Yirat Shamayim. Listen, I learned some Torah. I'm afraid of Hashem. I know that He creates everything. He's the best. He knows everything. He does everything. Of course, I have to Sanctify His name. You become men of truth. This is verse 21 if you're looking for it. 18:21. Once you get to a point of being a man of truth, you're going to hate money. I promise you. Why are you going to hate money? Money can do a lot of good things. You don't need it. it becomes meaningless. Why? Because you have Torah, you have Hashem, you have the truth. Whatever, money becomes a tool like a hammer. Whether you have a million, you don't have a million, same thing. Sure, it's nice to have a nice house. You know, Chazal say there are three things that someone needs to have in order for them to have a clear mind to study Torah. One of them is to have a nice house, you know, where he has nice things.

1:11:06doesn't necessarily need to have an empire, but a place that's clean. But when you're stuck to money, when all day you're spending your day chasing money, chasing money, I'm doing this deal, I'm selling this, I'm selling that, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, there's no way you could ever develop Yirat Shamayim. Why? Because money is completely full of impurity. Why? Because everyone else you're dealing with greedy, this, that. It's the root of all evil. It's the number one tool that the Yetzer Hara uses. Money. The funny thing is that once you get to the point of despising money, most likely you're going to have a lot of it. But the key is that he's telling you here that this is a goal. This should be a goal. Just like someone has a goal to be a talmid chacham, another person has a goal of being a CEO of AT&T. Another guy has a goal of being a good husband. Another guy has a goal of being a good father, and so on and so forth. He's saying this is the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal of a person is to have these four simple things.

1:12:24Learn some Torah and have some accomplishment. What's accomplishment? Learn some Torah a little bit every day. Have time for Torah every day. After that, you'll finally have a chance of having yirat Hashem. If you have yirat Hashem, naturally you will become an ish emet. And if you become an ish emet, you won't worry about money anymore. Why? Because you'll hate it. after Moshe gets this amazing advice, he gets permission from Hashem to go forward with it. In verse 24, it says Moshe heeded the voice of his father-in-law. And did everything that he said. Moshe b'teshuvah. How many times did Yitro tell him? One time. What did Moshe do? He listened. He did. This is what we need to do. This is what we need to do. The problem here at this point is a debate between Chazal whether this whole conversation happened before we got the Torah or after we got the Torah.

1:13:52Because, one, they’re talking about the Torah. On the other hand, we're not at a level where we know the Torah yet. I think this is before, but my opinion doesn't really mean very much. But I also think that because, even if we had the Torah, we didn't have the Torah for very long. And that's the reason that the next verse says, וַיִּבְחַר מֹשֶׁה אַנְשֵׁי-חַיִל מִכָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל. It says, "Moses chose men of accomplishment among all Israel." He only found people with money. Why only found people with money? Because they didn't have enough time to learn Torah to get to a point of having fear of Hashem, to get to a point of defending the truth, to get to a point of hating money. They just inherited billions and billions of dollars from Egypt just a few days ago, whether it was from before the crossing of the Yam Suf, or from Egypt, or after the Egyptians died. All the money they collect, they have all this newfound money. It all converts, and in verse 27 it says, "Moses sent off his father-in-law, and he went to his land." Now let me ask you a question. If you finally found the truth, the foundation of the truth, the biggest congregation in the world, the only congregation in the world, let's say there's one place in the world, you have Judaism. One place in the world, you have truth.

1:15:18Why would you leave? You love the truth. You left your country. You left your money. You left everything. The Torah left everything. He came to Moshe. He was there for about a year. And then verse 27 says, and he went to his land. He left. He went back to his country. Why? To spread the word. Ah, Chazak u'Baruch. He says he didn't have enough time to learn all the Torah. But he learned just enough to be dangerous. He learned just enough to do Kiruv. He watched Torah and Science from Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi. He read the book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, The Coming Revolution, or it's called The Science Comes of Age. Both are the same book.

1:16:18you had a few lectures here and there, maybe even got one of our own shiurim. You know a few things, and all of a sudden he's telling his friends, "Listen, there's a God. Listen, violating Shabbat is worse than murder. Listen, eating kosher food is very important. Eating salads at a non-kosher place is not allowed." It's no different, and it's actually even worse than eating meat. Why? Because when it's non-kosher salad, they don't wash it like the Jews wash it. So the bugs are there. When you eat a bug, it's like you made a violation six times. You eat a bug, six violations. You eat a pig, it's one. Better to eat pig. Only from Ukraine do you get some type of advice like that. But in this world, you're coming to say, do this, do this, you became the Satan, you became this and that. Regardless of what people say, you always have to be men of truth. That's what he's telling us here. And the reason why Yitro is leaving is because Yitro is saying, now that I know the truth, for me not to tell my family and friends...

1:17:46It's the worst possible thing I could ever do to them. It's like I know that a train is coming right at them, and it's going to run them over if they don't move. How could I not tell them? They're doing idol worship right now, or they're not keeping any mitzvot. And I know, it all says, there's Gan Eden, there's Gehenom. I know that with the idol worship that they're doing, or with violating all the mitzvot of the Torah, they're guaranteed a one-way ticket to Gehenom forever. There's no fixing it. There's no teshuva in Gehenom. So for me to say, no, no, I don't want them to hate me, I don't want them to... not like me, not invite me to the parties, call me a machmir, call me this, call me that, let them call me whatever they want. At least I told them. Why? Because just like the Rambam said, if I know that I'm speaking in front of 10,000 people, and 9,999 are not seekers of truth, they're not on shemet, but only one will listen to me,

1:19:08i care less about those 9,991. Why? Because of that one. In this generation, it's the opposite, unfortunately. People say, no, no, you don't want to offend the 9,000. If you tell them, no, no, you have 9,000 that want to hear it. Oh, but you have one that doesn't want to hear it, so don't give the speech anyway. 9,991 want to hear it. One guy doesn't like it. He made a bad Facebook comment. No, no, it's not politically correct. You're going to offend somebody because you're going to tell them that homosexuality is one of the worst violations in the Torah. People don't like to hear it. Rambam is telling us... For one person, that's all I care about. I care less about the 9,991. Why? Because they're not looking for truth. Yitro is telling you, I don't care about what they call me. I already went through that. When I told them their idol worship is nonsense, and I left it, and I lost all my money, and they tried to kill my daughters...

1:20:17I still look for the truth. I found the truth. Now I have to go back and report it to them. And it says, it comes back later on in the Torah, and it says that not only did he go back, he succeeded, and he came back and met Am Yisrael in Israel with hundreds of thousands of people that he converted. Hundreds of thousands of people that he converted. No joke. Yitro. It's always no joke. Exactly. When he went to Eretz Yisrael, his descendants came to Eretz Yisrael, hundreds of thousands of converts, righteous converts, they didn't know much. They just knew the basic knowledge that Yitro gathered over one year. So they all knew Torah and science. They all knew, you know, Mesilat Yesharim. They knew Rabbi Zamir Cohen's book. They knew a few good things. Okay, I've said that, but they don't know high-level stuff. As soon as they came there, Hashem made sure to tell Am Yisrael to give them a lot of kavod.

1:21:39Not only give them a lot of kavod, because these are people that are zealous for Hashem. They don't have much knowledge, but they are zealous for Hashem. They're in Shemit. So the first thing they did, they gave them a lot of kavod. The entire nation welcomed them. Again, just like they welcomed Yitro in Har Sinai, they welcomed him when they got to Israel. The second thing is, they gave them a gift. What's the gift? Jericho, which was the nicest city in Israel. Mm-hmm. Nicest city, they gave Jericho, where they grow all the, I think, figs. Figs, is it? They grow figs. They gave the nicest city. What does Yitro say? We didn't come for this. I didn't come all the way to Israel to relax and have my pension here. I have nice things to see. He said, what did you come here for? I came to learn Torah. Oh, you want to learn high-level Torah, you have to go to the desert. To the desert of Judah. Over there, you have Gedolei HaDor. Over there, you have people studying Torah morning to night, away from all the beauty, the Yetzer HaRa that you have sometimes, that are distractions. You want to learn high-level Torah, you have to be secluded from the world. That's why you have Talmidei Chachamim, such as Rabbi Kanievsky, Gedolei HaDor,

1:23:05All the major Talmidei Chachamim, even an Avrech, someone who just learns Torah, you see them? They're away from the world. They don't know what's going on in the news. They don't watch TV. They don't go around; they don't go to plays. Why are they concentrating on the Torah and concentrating on the spiritual world? They care less about this world, disconnected completely from this world. The more disconnected you are from this world... the more connected you are going to be to the spiritual world. The more connected you are to the spiritual world, the better you're going to be, not only in this world, but in the next world. But most importantly, this world is going to start looking to you like, why does anybody waste any time going to watch a movie? They can read a page of Gemara during that time. They can read four of them, even. I'm telling you, seriously, why would anybody go to a baseball game? This guy hits the ball, this, three, four hours, they're hitting the ball, or this one throws another ball, or this one. I'm telling you, a Talmid Chacham sees people—regular people—like they're crazy. Why would you go to the mall? You have nothing to do with your life? You finished all the Torah, you have to go to the mall, for what?

1:24:23I'm telling you, that's serious. Someone who's really into the Torah is completely disconnected from this world. It's like a different person. Obviously, everybody else thinks they're out of this world, but I'm telling you, they're much better off than us. So Yitro and his people go to the desert. And over there, they have Osniel ben Kenaz. Osniel ben Kenaz was the Gadol HaDor. And they say, listen, we don't know. They start, initially they're very shy. Chazal says they're very shy. They just, all of them hang out outside of the tent. They're so shy, they don't even want to go inside because they know what Torah is, but they don't have it. They're just listening from the outside to the Torah. So they say, what do you guys want? What are you doing? Oh, we're here to just listen to the Torah. If we don't bother you, please. No, no, come, come. Chazal says they started, they had so much zealousy

1:25:23zeal for the Torah and an ambition for the Torah. They learned, and Yitro got to the point where he had Ruach HaKodesh, literally speaking to Hashem on one of the highest levels there is. Yitro is a convert. Yitro is a Baal Teshuva. Yitro is someone from whom we can learn a lot of Mussar. Yitro gave us the roadmap of of how to get to a point of true accomplishment, and not necessarily some accomplishment. There's so much we can learn from this story, and this is just, again, what I'm telling you here for an hour, is only a small token of what we really have about it. There's a lot more. But, The one thing that I've seen from my experience, limited experience, but nonetheless some experience, is that when someone is really zealous for Hashem, and they're not Jewish, and they go through the whole conversion, it's no wonder the Gemara says that converts are like a skin disease for the Jewish nation. Why are they like a skin disease for the Jewish nation? Because the converts love Hashem so much,

1:26:51And they do so much for Hashem, when they really do it for Hashem. A real convert, not a convert that converted because, you know, they want to marry Joey, whose name is really Yosef, but he became American, so he calls himself Joey. He wants to make sure that Abba and Ima are happy. I'm talking about somebody who converted and really is learning Torah. Somebody who is really doing the right thing. I see them on the internet. They contact me, this, that. I'm telling you, they make the Jews look bad. They make the ones that were born like us, that were born natural, born Jews, look bad. Because all they want is Torah. They care less about money, they care less about everything. They're already at the level of Talmidei Chachamim without having the Torah that a Talmid Chacham has. It's mamash amazing. It's mamash amazing. It's something amazing. Begging, begging Jewish people, listen, listen. 15 minutes a day of Torah. I'll give you a disc for free. I'll give you a book. I'll give you this. I'll give you a link. I'll send you 5-minute videos. Please, just 5 minutes of Torah. Talk to Hashem. Say "Shema Yisrael" before you go to sleep. Something. You beg them. Convert? I need more Torah. What do you mean you need more Torah? You've already learned 10 hours today. Yeah, it's not enough. I had a guy call me the other day. This kid. Jewish kid. But really, really cute kid. Calls me like 11:30 at night. And...

1:28:18He's a Baal Teshuva. And he tells me, "Listen, I'm learning in yeshiva already for the last, you know, several months since I did teshuva. And it's not enough. I need to learn more." He finishes school at 5, 6 o'clock at night. He doesn't finish his school at 1 o'clock like the public school. Yeshiva finishes late in the day. He says, "Yeah, I get home, I need more, I need more, I need more. I need more Torah." 16-year-old kid. Halvai aleinu. i need more. He learns Torah. Yeshiva, you don't joke around, play basketball all day. You go learn Torah. He says, I need more. Someone who sees a little bit of the truth is going to want more. He's going to want more. After this, we get to Har Sinai.

1:29:20I'm sorry, before finishing it off with Yitro, what was the basis of all this? What was the point of all this advice that Yitro was giving? He's saying that if you do everything that I say, not only will you not be burnt out, but the people will be happy. Because they'll be helped. I remember when I was younger, when I first started in the business, I had one of my bigger clients, a guy named David Taylor. A rather nice guy. A really amazing guy. He would call me sometimes at 9 o'clock at night, 9:30 at night. I would call him. And he told me one time, I'll never forget it, but he told me a few times, he goes, listen, you're younger now, you're working long hours. You know, start the day at 5 o'clock in the morning and finish maybe around midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning. Sleep for a few hours, go back to work, non-stop, like a machine. He's like, listen, you're going to get burned out. I was in my 20s at the time, early 20s even. Ah, burnt out, who thinks I'm burnt out? I'm here just printing money.

1:30:45printing money, thinking, you know, every phone call is money. Every client meeting, this, that's money. I'm just thinking money, I'm just thinking money, thinking money. You don't think you're going to get burnt out when you're younger. But, you know, you should have listened to the old man. Because you know what he's talking about. In the material world, if you don't give yourself a little bit of spirituality to feed yourself, you don't give yourself a little bit of room, You get burnt out, and I definitely had some stages where I became burnt out and became sick. Obviously, there were other reasons for it, but nonetheless, Yitro over here is telling us—he's telling Moshe—that if you continue this, you will surely be worn out. But if you heed my advice... You'll be happy. The nation will be happy. You won't be worn out. Amen. And the people are going to be confident that the judges you picked are the right judges and are judging the right way. They won't be frustrated. They won't think that anybody beat the system, beat them.

1:32:12And this is actually also another thought that I had that I wanted to make sure to add to this shiur is that it says here, poor people in general, people have a very, very big misunderstanding of the frustration that poor people have. You know, you see people who where they go on protests or different things, and they're very, very frustrated, especially you see a lot of it in America, you see it all over the world. But people have a misunderstanding about poor people. In general, poor people are very religious. Most poor people tend to be more religious, more close to Hashem than rich people. And the problem that poor people have that's bigger than their own poverty. Having no money, you'll find plenty of poor people who are very happy. More often, you'll find poor people who are happy than you'll find rich people who are happy. Personally, I've never met a rich person who was happy. No, I'm serious. Including myself, when I was rich, I wasn't happy at all. But people who don't have any money...

1:33:35the frustration that you will find in them sometimes is not because they don't have any money. It's because the rich, the ones that do have money, are taking advantage of the system and taking advantage of their power, not just to become richer, but to actually create more poverty. So, the frustration that the poor have has nothing really to do with the fact they don't have any money. They'll manage, they eat, they drink, they breathe, and so on. But the real frustration that you see in civilization today is that there's such a wide gap between the rich and the poor that the top 1% of wealth in the world, or even the top half of a percent, of wealth in the world has more than 90% of all the money in the world. Top half percent. People that have the top half percent that have all the money have literally more than 90% of all the money in the world. So if they have all the money, they make all the rules. And a lot of these rules, regulations, and laws, and so on, are to make more money that they don't even need. But at the same time, it's creating more poverty.

1:35:06That's why you find frustration. That's why when you see a celebrity's son or a congress member's son kill somebody while drunk driving, they get released on bail, never see trial, never face any problem. Everything's okay. Why? Because Abba works for the government. Abba is a multi-millionaire... billionaire... No problem. Poor little guy... you know... Father's a teacher... or maybe a dentist... He himself gets into a little fender bender. Oh! Somebody got injured. You lose half your net worth. Go to jail for two years. You lose your dentist's license. Why? I didn't kill him on purpose. It was an accident. That's why they call it an accident. I had a friend. I had a friend, a business friend, who got into a car accident. And... The other guy was an old man, probably in his 80s, driving in front of him. He ran into him, and because the guy slowed down too fast on the highway, long story short, ran into him, the guy died. There's more than enough proof that the guy died actually even before he hit him. He died from a heart attack. But, long story short, the government was pretty much set on sending him to jail forever.

1:36:33It wasn't on purpose. It was an accident. He didn't do it on purpose. He didn't wake up in the morning and think, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to go kill some old man on the highway." But that's the world we live in. And that's why Yitro says that you have to have a system. You have to have these judges. These judges have to be special people. They have to have accomplishments, you know, in the Torah. They have to be God-fearing people. They have to have Yirat Shamayim, men of truth, who hate money. If you find people like that, There's no end to the success that your people will have. So your friend ended up staying in jail for? He didn't go to jail. Baruch Hashem, he didn't go to jail. Baruch Hashem. Yeah, he spent a ton of money on lawyer fees, but in the end, he didn't go to jail. And that went broke almost. Yeah. I mean, it's good he was rich, actually. He had a lot of money, so he was able to pay for it, but he definitely lost at least 10 years of his life dealing with the stress from it. Wow. So after this, you have a... Hashem is telling us, starting to talk to the people of Israel. Just take the whole thing. Eat as much as you want. Please. You saw what I did to the people of Egypt.

1:38:00This verse? Maybe. I think so. Yes, it is possible. Yeah, that video. Yeah, the video is very good. I actually saw a big part of that lecture. It's a good lecture. He's asking about a Muslim video that I sent out. But what he tried to prove is that we're not keeping the mitzvot. He's right. He's right though. So Hashem is telling us, you've seen what I did to Egypt and that I was borne you on the wings of eagles, and brought you to Me. I took you out of Egypt. But I took you out of Egypt on the wings of eagles. Why does it mean wings of eagles? Like an eagle, when it flies and it has a baby, it puts the baby on its back. So in case somebody shoots an arrow at it, it can protect the baby. So Hashem protected us also the same way. How? When we left Egypt, He gave us the pillar of fire and the pillar of a cloud. So even when the Egyptians shot arrows at us,

1:39:24nothing hurt us. And now, if you hearken well to Me, meaning if you listen to Me well and observe My covenant, you shall be to Me the most beloved treasure of all people, for Mine is the entire world. You shall be to Me a kingdom of ministers and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel. So Hashem is telling us here, again, we're hearing the same word: listen. I tell you these are the rules. You have mitzvot, you have to do them. It's very, very simple. If you hear it and you do it, you keep my brit, you're going to be a special nation. And not only are you going to be a special nation, everything you want I'll give you. Why? Because He says, everything is Mine. So everything you really want, you want My stuff. You want money? It's My money. You want land? It's My land. You want a wife? She's My daughter. You want a husband? He's My son.

1:40:44Anything you want, it's Mine. So if you want it, be nice to Me. Obey My commandments. Keep the brit. You want to be happy? Just do what I say. It's very simple. Shema. One time. Why do you have to go to lectures for 25 years and still not do teshuva? Still not listening. Shema. Why? You're just finding it interesting? So you could be two people. You could go to lectures for 20 years and still not do teshuva. That's Amalek. Oh, it's interesting. Shema. It's interesting that Hashem took them out of Egypt. It's interesting that He split the sea. But I wasn't there to see it, so maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe it's just relevant to them. Maybe it's for you, it's not for me. All the excuses people have to justify their own life. Hashem, we could be that. Or we could be Yitro. listen, and do. This is exactly what Hashem wants. So if we wondered which one does Hashem want, which one does Hashem pick, Hashem is telling us here, this is from Hashem's words, not Moshe, not me, not a rabbi, not anything—Hashem. This is Hashem's opinion.

1:42:03That's it. You want to be a special nation? You want to have everything you want? You want to have everything that I have? You want me to give it to you? Just keep my brit. Keep my covenant. Keep this deal. It's as simple as it gets. Now, somebody today can say, okay, they agreed. Hashem told Am Yisrael 3,300 years ago, but I'm not there. Sounds like my brother. Too bad. So I'm taking, in verse 8, Vaya'anu kol ha'am yachdav, vayomru kol asher diber Adonai, na'aseh.

1:43:05The entire people responded together and said, "Everything that Hashem has spoken, we shall do." So how does this end? So now we have the entire nation of Israel agreeing to do everything. Somebody comes today and says, "Okay, they agreed. I didn't agree." It doesn't matter. Like, you know, saying, why it doesn't matter. The people that started... Let's say America. They wrote a constitution. Whether you were there or not is irrelevant. You still have to comply with the constitution they wrote 250 years ago. By being part of the country, you have to obey the laws. If you want to be Jewish, you have to obey the Torah. If you don't comply with the Torah, you're not Jewish. Simple as that.

1:44:06When we went to Har Sinai, we didn't have a Torah yet that was Bechtav. We didn't officially become a nation yet. We were called Israelites, we were called Hebrews. We didn't have the Torah that we have today. So before we got to Har Sinai, we were not considered Jewish. Once we got to Har Sinai, we became Jewish. What changed? Torah. Torah. Which means that if we did not accept the Torah, if Am Yisrael did not accept the Torah, not only would we not be Jewish, but Hashem would destroy the world. Because the purpose of creation, according to Him, according to the Creator, is the Jews. The Jews. Now, if a different nation came before us, if all you know, because Hashem went to all the nations and asked them, do you want the Torah? Do you want the Torah? Esav, the nation of Edom, didn't want it because they said, "No, we can't tolerate it; we have to kill. We can't steal, we can't kill." Ishmael, "No, no, we have to steal." Everyone wanted to do things that are not in the Torah. So they didn't accept it. They didn't accept it. But if one of them did accept it, they would be Jews.

1:45:34They would be Jews, which means that if you're already part of the nation, but you're not keeping the laws that are required to be part of the nation, don't be so offended when Hashem says it. The Rabbi is saying it because he read it in the Torah. He's not saying it because he's making it up. He read in the Torah that Hashem says, if you don't comply with My rules, you're cut off from the nation. You're not part of the nation. So when someone says, oh, where, you know, what are you? He says, Jewish. Okay, what makes you Jewish? My, uh, my identification card. No, that's not making you Jewish. My mom. No, that just qualifies you to be Jewish. My grandmother, she was a tzaddeket. Okay, it's good for her. What does it do for you? My grandfather was a big tzaddik, big chacham. He was Rabbi this, Rabbi that. Okay, that's great for him. He's probably very upset about you not being religious. It's even worse for you. Giving tzedakah, putting a dollar in a tzedakah box every day. It doesn't make you Jewish. I'm sorry. I did a bar mitzvah and that's it.

1:46:49There are some people who only do a bar mitzvah in America. I met a lot of Americans that they just did a bar mitzvah. Not even a bar mitzvah. Before we do teshuva, unfortunately there's no end to how far we can be. But the key is that someone, just like we said in the beginning of the shiur, is that you are obligated to ask what is the purpose of life. To ask who created all of this and what does He want. There's no such thing as this world coming from nothing. There's no such thing as using that as an excuse. There's no such thing as, you know, it's okay to remain ignorant. You know, there's a saying in English, which is very ridiculous but unfortunately has become very popular: "Ignorance is bliss." Like, if you don't know, it's okay. It's good sometimes not to know. In Judaism, we say that the biggest disease in the world is ignorance. Ignorance. It's not knowing. Which Hashem doesn't like. So there's no such thing as, you know, using being ignorant as an excuse for not doing what Hashem wants. And as far as whether you agree, whether you were at Har Sinai or not, it's irrelevant. First of all, your neshama was there. But even more so, even if you physically don't feel it and are not connected to it or anything like that, you should already know that if you want to include yourself in

1:48:17Judaism, Judaism is based on the Torah, not on the people. So now starts the revelation, the whole Ten Commandments. And something extraordinary happens in the first two commandments. The first two commandments, which Hashem is telling them, I am Hashem, your God, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt from the house of slavery. That's the first commandment. Second commandment is, You shall not recognize the gods of others in My presence. And then it goes on a little bit more. More details. You can't have any other gods. I'm your only God. I'm the one who took you out of Egypt. Those are the first two commandments that Am Yisrael heard as a nation.

1:49:42But later on in the parasha, it says that when they heard this, they said to Moses, "You speak to us." And we shall hear. Let God not speak to us, lest we die. Moses, you go talk to God. We'll hear what you say. If He continues to talk, we're going to die. Now let me ask you guys a question. If God, all of us, every day we pray, I know in your heart at some point, you want Hashem to answer. Sometimes you think He's going to answer. Sometimes you get into the prayer thinking, "Hashem, talk to me. No, no, no. I'm not going to tell anybody. Talk to me. Talk to me. Answer back." You know, you're praying to Hashem. You're praying to Hashem. You're praying to Hashem. You want Hashem to come to you in some light or something. You know, you want something. You really want something. You want Him to talk to you. Who doesn't want Hashem to talk to him? Who doesn't want to be like Moshe Rabbeinu?

1:51:08But over here you have the nation of Israel. Millions of people heard His voice. Heard His voice and they're telling Moshe, "No, no, tell Him to stop talking or we're going to die." The souls came out, no? And then the angels tried to bring them back? No, no, no. Not the angels. They were tzadikim. a high level as far as prophecy, but not high enough like Moshe Rabbeinu. So when they heard Hashem speak the first commandment, everyone died. Hashem brought them back to life. Resurrection of the dead. He said the second commandment: "Don't have any other gods." Everyone dies. Death is not easy. Death is painful. It only looks easy in the movies. In real life, it's painful. Unless you're a tzaddik, you die when you sleep.

1:52:38So they tell Moshe, "You speak to us, you go talk to Him. Tell Him to stop talking because we're going to die again and we can't take it." After the second commandment, they told Moshe. The question is, that's from last year's shiur. You remember it, good memory, Nisan. But now I'm going to ask you a question. Why did Hashem do this where He spoke? Now, of course, Hashem knew that they're going to die. He's the one that controls whether they live or die, right? So now He knew they're going to die, and He's going to have to bring them back, and they're going to die again after He brings them back. Then they're going to tell Moshe, "Please stop." Why go through all of that? Either don't make them die or don't talk to them. To show the resurrection of the dead. So we will not question it. Resurrection of the dead, fine. But why... Why didn't Moshe die? Because he was a big tzadik from all these other... So a combination of the two will get to the answer. Right now, the nation of Israel, even though it said in last week's parashah,

1:54:06It said that the nation of Israel feared Hashem, and they believed in Him and in Moshe, His servant. But Hashem promised to Moshe that they're going to believe in Moshe forever, not just this generation. People are going to believe in you. The entire world is going to believe in you forever, not just the Jews even. Whether it's Muslims or the Christians. Everyone believes. Anyone that believes in the Torah believes in Moshe. Even historians have proofs. That's on purpose. But now, Hashem is telling the nation of Israel that you have to follow Moshe and the Torah. Hamushach and Moshe Torah is named after Moses. Torah Moshe. Hashem wants to make sure that everyone knows that Moshe is different.

1:55:12Now, if you have a company and there's no managers, no owners, no nothing, just a bunch of employees, everyone's the same, how long is the company going to survive? Five minutes. Five minutes, right? Because if there's no boss, no owners, no management, everybody makes their own rules, eventually everybody realizes, wait a minute, why should I get a salary? I could just take stuff and start my own company. Why should I listen to him? He's on the same level as me. There's no teamwork. It becomes anarchy. In order to have a successful company or successful anything, you have to have leadership. What is the mistake I made personally and many companies make is when the managers or the owners of small businesses become friends with regular employees. One of the biggest mistakes you could possibly do. Why? Because when you're not friends, you're distant. When you're a manager or a CEO or anything like that, the employees don't know you. They don't know how much you know. They don't know what you know. They don't know how much you have or what you have. They just know that you call the shots. And if you call the shots, there's a reason for it. Once you become friends, they realize you're human. They realize you're the same as them. I agree with you. I agree with you.

1:56:40So eventually what happens? They're thinking to themselves, even if the guy is 20 and you're 50. The 20-year-old is saying, I'm smarter than this 50-year-old. He doesn't even know how to use a computer like I do. He doesn't know how to do web design. He doesn't know this. He doesn't know that. I have an IQ of 187. His IQ is barely like a monkey's. But the 50-year-old has been around the block. Right. They don't think like that when they're 20 years old. So what happens? When you become friends... They start seeing you as equal. Eventually, they'll see you as even less. Why? Because they're saying, why does he have all the, why is he taking half my salary? I remember my employees in my company used to be upset. I became friends with them. I made the mistake of doing that. They said, how can you take half the money that we make? Like, first of all, like I'm taking it personally. There's no company. There's no lights. There's no office. There's no advertisement. There's no, you know, secretaries, nothing. Everything is free. The government pays for it, or Hashem pays for it. Nobody's sending me a check. It's a company. It's a business. But once we became friends, they started looking at me personally. "No, you make a lot of money on your own. Why do you have to take my money?" This is what Hashem wanted to make sure to avoid.

1:58:06You want to make sure the nation of Israel at that point and forever will know that Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, Yaakov Avinu, all of the forefathers, are different. Why? We've seen from their stories each one of them did something that none of us can ever do. Mm-hmm. If you only say that the miracles of Mitzrayim are what Moshe did, people can say, no, Hashem really did it. He just put the stick there. Mm-hmm. Hashem really did it. They're not going to give Moshe the credit that he deserves. So Hashem wanted to make sure people realized that Moshe Rabbeinu is superhuman. He's the only one in existence ever that can listen to Hashem's voice and stand alive. Was it another person, sorry, another person that also, or a woman, that would speak to, or maybe it was the dreams? Everybody else, everybody else that spoke to Hashem, it was either through meditation, or a dream, or some other form of a...

1:59:19of sleep. Nobody else stood up. There had to be a prophet. But nobody else spoke to Hashem like Moshe did. Another thing, before Hashem gave us those two commandments, He told Moshe that they're going to know and believe in you forever. But you have to prepare the future leaders. How do you prepare the future leaders? He gives them instructions on what to do. He says, descend, you know, go down from the mountain, descend and warn the people lest they break through to Hashem and see, and the multitude of them will fall. Hashem is telling him that only you are allowed on the mountain. No one else is allowed on the mountain. The mountain is holy because I am holy and I am on the mountain. Once I leave the mountain, everyone can go on the mountain because the mountain itself is just land. It's just sand. I am the one who is holy, and I am too high for them. They are not at that level where they can even hear my voice, let alone be on the mountain like you. So make sure to tell the people to, first of all,

2:00:46to go to the mikveh three days before, the three days before I give them the Torah, they cannot be with their wives, and they must clean their clothes. But one last thing, make sure you tell them not to go on the mountain. So He said it already once. Here, He's saying it a second time. Go back, He's already on the mountain now. Moses, go back, tell the people, make sure not to go on the mountain. It's a holy place. Stolen twice, same thing. So Moses responds in verse 23. Moses said to Hashem, "The people cannot ascend to Mount Sinai, for You have warned us, saying, 'Bound the mountain and sanctify it.'" Hashem said to him, "Go, descend." Moses is saying to Hashem, you already told us, of course, you know, we can't go up to the mountain because these people are not going to do it, because they know they're going to get the death penalty. They die on the spot; they go on the mountain, they die. So I don't have to repeat it. Hashem says, no, go down and tell them to fear Hashem. Here he's telling us, Moses gave Am Yisrael pshat.

2:02:11He's saying, "Hashem, you already told the nation of Israel not to go up the mountain. So why do I have to go down from the mountain and tell them again? They know already that You're real. So they're not going to violate what You said." Moses gave him, you know, was, was, you know, gave him a kaf zchut on his side. He said, listen, they know You're real. How could anyone that knows that Hashem is real go against Hashem? Are you crazy? But it's the Jewish people. I'm sure of it. But this is Moshe Rabbeinu. See how Moshe Rabbeinu loved the nation. He wasn't just a leader because Hashem gave him the position; he loved the nation. So he said, no, of course, they're never going to sin. You told them not to go on the mountain; they're not going to go on the mountain. You told them not to violate Shabbat; they're not going to violate Shabbat. You gave them 613 commandments. They said, "We will do and then we'll hear." So if you said something, I don't have to repeat it to them. Hashem says, no, go and repeat it to them.

2:03:11What does it mean, go and repeat it to them? Get used to it. Just because I said it, and just because they know it's true, doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to violate it. So if you want to be a leader, make sure you keep repeating the Torah. Make sure you keep repeating the teaching of the Torah. Because if you want to be a rabbi, you must consistently reinforce the lessons and values of the Torah. you want to be a man of truth. You want to be a descendant of Am Yisrael to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat, and learn and learn and learn and learn, because the only way to ever get to any substance is by having this repetition. And As much as Moshe Rabbeinu loved us and as much as Hashem loved us, you see the difference here between mankind and Hashem. Mankind is saying, "No, listen, he's a nice guy, he's a tzaddik, he's this, he's that, he's not going to sin. If you tell him not to do it, he's not going to do it." Hashem says, "Listen, I created him, I know what he's going to do and what he's not going to do. If you don't tell him, he's definitely going to do it."

2:04:29Even if we tell him, there's a chance he's not going to do it anyway. So that was the second time that Moshe told them... There probably was some chacham who tried to go on the mishal. I don't understand. This is Matan Torah now, right? Yeah. And after that, it's Shavuot. After what? Shavuot. Shavuot. Matan Torah. What do you mean? It's a parasha. It's a preparation now. Yeah. Right? No, we get the Ten Commandments here, yes. Okay. But on Shavuot, you're saying that we got the Torah. Yeah, we don't read the parashiyot necessarily at the same time that the holidays are. Shavuot is when we got the Torah, officially. But we don't read the parashiyot at the same time. Like right now is not when we got the Torah in history. We got it during Shavuot. That's what I'm saying. No, we don't read the... We're going to read parts... ...of a Torah that is relevant to Shavuot. Shavuot is when we received the Torah, but it is not the current time. Even though we read this parasha now, historically, we received the Torah during Shavuot, which is months away. Do you have any other questions?

2:05:54You have the answer? It's good? So, now, some people have this misbelief that Hashem loves everyone. Yes, He loves all of creation because all of creation is His creation. But, but, there are some people that are called His enemies. And you will find it in Shemot, chapter 20, verse 5. When He's saying the second commandment, Ki Anokhi Hashem Elohecha, El Kana, Poked Avon Avot, Al Banim, Al Shileshim, Ve'al Rebe'im, Leson'ai. You shall not prostrate yourself to them nor worship them. He's talking about idol worship. For I am Hashem, your God, a jealous God, who visits the sin of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation for My enemies.

2:07:17but who shows kindness for thousands of generations to those who love Me and observe My commandments. So first and foremost, we realize someone who does not observe the commandments is called an enemy. Someone who does observe the commandments is called a lover. It's very simple. Whether it's in English, the Hebrew translation, or Chinese, it still says it literally. It's not an interpretation. It says it literally here. when he's talking about the lovers, those who love Me, who's the ones that love Me? He's comparing it to those that observe My commandments. Shalom Yitzchak. Shalom Yitzchak obviously loves Me. But the ones that He's punishing, He's punishing them, the sins of a father on the children. For three and four generations. Those are My enemies. What's the relevance of the father? How could a son be punished for a sin that his father did? His father was an idol worshiper. His father was a Mechalel Shabbat. His father was a thief. His father was all these bad things. Why should he get punished? It's not his fault. So the Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin says that

2:08:38No, a person does not get punished for his father's sins if he doesn't do the same thing. If his father was an idol worshiper and did all the bad things in the world, and he continues to violate Shabbat and do the same things as his father, then he is technically committing an even bigger sin than his father. Mm-hmm. so he gets the punishment for his father. If he does teshuva and he becomes a righteous person, he doesn't get the sins of his father. So the important thing to know here is that anyone who thinks, for some reason or another, that Hashem It just forgives everything, and there's no consequence to everything. There are clear verses without interpretation, commentary, or anything else that you can just read and see that it doesn't say anything like that. A big part of the Torah says things that are quite the opposite of what people think. You shall not take the name of Hashem, your God, in vain, for Hashem will not absolve anyone who takes His name in vain. This is a very, very important commandment. It's the third commandment.

2:10:02we're almost done, by the way, but it's the third commandment, and it's using Hashem's name in vain. This is, you know, you would think that this is, you know, you shouldn't swear in Hashem's name, you shouldn't do the things that are obvious, but what people don't understand, don't realize, is that sometimes when you make the, you know, you make the wrong bracha, it's also misusing the name of Hashem. So you have to make sure that if you don't know what bracha to make on something, don't eat. Don't eat. Don't eat. Stay hungry. Stay hungry. Don't make a bracha. Or, take your phone, call Yaron, call Rabbi Google, call someone, "What bracha do I make for an apple? What bracha do I make for such-and-such?" Find out, then eat. It happened to me. I ate a banana because... a banana is adamah. So what I did by mistake, I did the etz, but then I corrected myself. No, if you already did etz, don't do it again. There's something called making blessings for no reason. That is a form of... it's not good. So it's a form of using Hashem's name in vain. Another thing that's even more so that happens amongst the Jews and non-Jews very often, unfortunately...

2:11:31is when they misuse Hashem's name when they're talking or when they're writing stuff on the internet. The non-Jews especially, you know, especially if they're Christian missionaries, or even sometimes when they're trying to get closer to the Torah. Somebody told them how to pronounce or a way to pronounce the name of Hashem that's Yud, He, Vav, and He. And they use it. They say, "Oh, you know," And you're not allowed to say the Name. You're not allowed to pronounce that Name. We say "Hashem." Now, the word "Hashem" is not really Hashem's Name. The reason why I can say it over and over again is because "Hashem" literally means "the Name." "Hashem" is "name"; "Ha" is "the." So, "Hashem" means "the Name." Why do we use the word "Hashem" instead of saying "Elohim" or "Adonai"? Why do we say that?

2:12:33First of all, you're only allowed to say the Name of Hashem if you're reading it from the Torah, or if you're making a bracha, or you're praying. But if we're just saying it in a casual conversation, you're under no condition allowed to use Hashem's Name. You reminded me, on Sunday, I was at Starbucks, and some lady was saying in English, she started saying, talking to someone, and then it was such, it's like, Baruch Atah Elohim, Elokeinu Melech HaOlam. She kept on saying it over and over. I don't know if she's maybe Jewish or not Jewish, but she knew what she was saying. Saying the Elokim with the hey, the name, or Adonai, but with the D, you're not allowed to say that casually. And I was thinking, you shouldn't say that unless... No, that's violating the third commandment. That's not only violating the Torah, it's violating the... Maybe I should have said something, but I don't know, I wasn't... Yeah, well now you know, we'd say, you're not allowed to use the name of Hashem casually. His name is too holy, which is the reason why we say the word "Hashem." By saying "Hashem"...

2:13:47it's we're telling the world and whoever we're speaking to that His name is so holy that we can't say His name. And we're saying "the Name," so we can't even— we're referencing "the Name." The Name is so holy that just by saying "Hashem," we're just referencing the Name. So, people need to understand this: you can't just go out there and say the name of Hashem, even in English, the word "G-O-D." you can't just say it for no reason. You have to have a substantial reason to say Hashem's name. It's very, very important to not, you know, just throw His name around like you throw, you know, I don't know, some baseball player's name or something like that. So, it's very, very, very important. And actually, this is a bigger problem amongst non-Jews because I see it on the internet a lot. They write it, and they think that because they heard somebody say the name that way, then it makes complete nonsense. They even write the name. You see a lot of Christian websites all of a sudden start writing the name that we have in the Torah, the Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh. They write it everywhere in different posters and flyers and things on the internet. I remember I told you the story. So they make it like they're using His name. Tattoo His name under the...

2:15:09So, yeah, yeah. So, people are crazy. People are crazy. Yeah, I've seen tattoos, I think, a few times. So, that's another thing. As we've heard this many times, so I'm not going to go over this again. Skip. I can't skip it, but I won't go over it in detail. It's the fourth commandment. Huh? Huh? No, I didn't mean it. I thought you were going to do something else. That's okay. Prophecy I haven't gotten yet, so I don't know what you're going to say. Remember the day of Shabbat. For six days you will work and do all your work. That's okay. How many times is it written? Shabbat? Forty-eight times. Forty-eight? No, it's converts. No, more than thirty times. Shabbat, twelve times it talks about. Mot yumat, and so on. The tough parts of Shabbat. Remember the Shabbat day to sanctify it. Six days shall you work and accomplish all your work. But the seventh day is Shabbat to Hashem, your God. You shall not do any work. You, your son, your daughter, your slave, your maidservant, your animal, your convert within your gates. For six days, Hashem made the heaven and the earth.

2:16:37The heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. And He rested on the seventh day. So now, Shabbat. Two things about Shabbat and then we'll move on because we've gone over this many times and you already know it. But number one is that... You done? Distracted. So, number one, Hashem is telling us that violating Shabbat... Shabbat is, in essence, what you're saying you agree, you're remembering that Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. So, in essence, what it means, the opposite of that means that someone who violates the Shabbat is saying, "I don't believe that Hashem created the world in six days." That's a nice way to... No, this is what Chazal says. This is not my translation or interpretation. This is what the Torah says. This is why he's saying it. By saying... Okay, what is Shabbat? He's saying Shabbat. Shabbat, the entire week in Hebrew, in Hebrew, the language of Hebrew is very special. So you see, the entire week is based off of the Shabbat. Yom Rishon, what's Yom Rishon? Yom Sheini, Yom Shlishi. First day, second day, third day, fourth day. What does it mean? The only day that actually has a name is Shabbat. Shabbat doesn't mean seven. Okay, so...

2:18:05So, first day from Shabbat, second day from Shabbat, third day from Shabbat, fourth day from Shabbat, fifth day from Shabbat, sixth day from Shabbat, you know, so everything the entire week is based off of Shabbat. You see it in your prayer in the morning. You say that, you know, each day you have a different prayer that you say for each day. It says, this is the second day from Shabbat, third day from Shabbat. It's not like in English. where they call the names of the days based on idol worship. You know, all the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all those names of the days in English are based off of different Roman and Greek gods. Fake gods. So, in Hebrew, each day in the Torah has... a number, one, two, three, four, five, six, and Shabbat is the seventh day. So the entire week is based off of Shabbat. Hashem made those six days just for the purpose of Shabbat. He's mentioning it over here that I created the world in six days and I stopped on the Shabbat, which in essence means, and what Chazal is explaining to us here, is that by

2:19:18not sanctifying the Shabbat, not remembering the Shabbat, not observing the Shabbat, you pretty much are saying that you disagree with what Hashem did. You disagree with what Hashem said. Chilul Shabbat means that you don't believe that Hashem created the world in six days. It's as simple as it gets. The second thing with Shabbat is, as you can see, we've mentioned this before, is that it's the fourth commandment. The first five commandments are are between us and Hashem. The second set of five commandments are between man and man, man and his fellow. So you have Hashem telling us He's the only God. Don't idol worship. Don't use His name in vain. Shabbat is number four. Five is honor your father and your mother. So how could that possibly be? How could that possibly be between us and God? The Gemara tells us that there are three partners in creation: the father, the mother, and Hashem. The father brings part of the body, and the mother brings part of the body. Bones, I believe, come from the father. The meat comes from the mother. Yeah.

2:20:38The white comes from the father and the red comes from the mother. Hashem gives the soul. After this person gets to a point where Hashem wants to take back His share, He takes the soul. What's left? Just a piece of meat. Mm-hmm. So, Hashem is saying that those parents that were My partners, you have to respect them. You have to honor them. You have to give them respect and honor like you give God. But, you have to remember that I am God. So, in Vayikra 19:3... where it mentions this mitzvah again, in Sefer Vayikra, in Parashat Kedoshim, it says, "Your mother and father shall you revere, you should fear them, and My Shabbats shall you observe. I am Hashem your G-d."

2:22:04It's repeating the commandments again. But if you notice, it's saying the Shabbat and also the fearing of your parents. But then at the end of the sentence it says, "I am Hashem." Respect your parents, but I am Hashem. What does it mean? It means that you have to respect your parents so long as your parents respect Hashem. If your parents are telling you to go drive to the store on Shabbat, you're not allowed to listen to them. you're not allowed to listen to them. If your parents tell you to do anything against the Torah, you're not allowed to listen to them. Why? Because I am Hashem. Hashem is God. He is the Creator. He comes before your parents. But as long as your parents are righteous parents, then you have to give them respect like you give to Hashem Himself. That's what He's telling you here. So that's why it's still on the same side. It's still on the same side of the commandments. You know, there were two boards. It's still on the same side of between man and God. The second five, which are much shorter. You have a don't kill commandment.

2:23:18Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. By the way, the stealing mentioned here is actually referring to kidnapping, not stealing from stores, like Kit Kat bars. It's referring to kidnapping. You shall not bear false witness. And you shall not covet your fellow's house. So, being jealous—this is the last commandment—being jealous is a violation. This is in 2014. So, in regards to jealousy,

2:24:22There's a very good point here by Rabbi Hirsch: that this last commandment, commandment number 10—"Don't be jealous"—is actually one of the best proofs that the Torah comes from God and not from men. Because saying there's one God, okay, that could be, you know... Shabbat, you could just say that a king had a special rule; he wants one day a week break. Respecting parents is also logical. Stealing is logical. Murder is logical. Adultery is logical. But telling people, "Don't be jealous," that means that you're going to not only care, but you're going to know what's in our mind. And Hashem says, I know what you're thinking, and you're not allowed to think that. I know what you're thinking about your friend's brand new car; you're not allowed to think that. Don't be jealous that he has a brand new car. Be happy for him. Don't be jealous that he has a pretty wife.

2:25:48Don't be jealous he has a lot of money. Don't be jealous of anything. Why? Because jealousy shows a lack of emunah. By being jealous of someone else, you're demonstrating a lack of belief in Hashem. Because in essence what you're saying when you're jealous of somebody else is: number one, you're saying a few really, really bad things if you really think about jealousy. Number one, you're saying that Hashem made a mistake. he got, but I didn't get. I didn't get. How could it be that he got, and I didn't get? What, Hashem made a mistake? So by being jealous, already you're saying that Hashem made a mistake. That's number one, which is already crazy enough. The second thing is, is that you're saying that Hashem... He doesn't have the ability to give enough to you, to them, and so on? He only has enough to give to one person, and He gave it to him. And obviously, you already think it's a mistake, because you should have gotten it—the pretty wife, the house, the money, the job, whatever, whatever.

2:27:17Having this lack of emunah, having this jealousy, is mamash poison inside you. The last thing is that it's saying that Hashem is not the intelligent design before everything and after everything and between everything. Meaning that He is behind the scenes and everything that He does has a reason. So by being jealous You're questioning the actions of Hashem. These are not good things to have. Whatever happens, what other people get—if they get good, Baruch Hashem. If you get good, Baruch Hashem. If they don't get good, try to, you know, help them. If you don't get good, you should say Baruch Hashem. That's a bracha. But the key is that we have to understand that Hashem does everything for a reason, not just for the sake of doing it. So, to finish off, we're going to finish off with one main thing. As we said before, in verse 15 or 16, it says, "They said to Moshe, 'Speak to us, and we shall hear.'"

2:28:45Let God not speak to us, lest we die. So we already went over that, that they didn't want to hear Hashem's words anymore, because they were scared they were going to die. So what is the response that Moshe gave them? Vayomer Moshe la'am, al tira'u, ki l'va'avur nasot etchem ba Elohim, u'l'va'avur tihiyeh yirato al p'neichem l'vilti techetau. Moses said to the people, "Do not fear, for in order to elevate you, has God come, so that awe of Him, fear of Hashem, shall be upon your faces, so that you shall not sin."

2:29:47Moses is telling us something very, very important that we can apply to our lives, and that's what Yitro did to get him to complete teshuvah, that's what Moshe did to get to the point of becoming Moshe Rabbeinu, and that's what every righteous person ever did. Moshe is telling us here not to be so worried, not to be scared. Hashem is trying to lift you up. ...trying to elevate you. How is He trying to elevate you? By getting you to the point of having Yirat Shamayim. By hearing His voice and causing you this fear that's on your faces, upon your faces. That's why in Birkat HaMazon, you have to say Peneichem; it's in Tehilim. But the point is that... by creating Yirat Shamayim, you will get to the ultimate goal, which is, you will not sin. So that the awe of Him shall be upon your faces, so that you shall not sin. If you get to a point,

2:31:15of one day, Be'ezrat Hashem, getting to a point of having true Yirat Shamayim, that will get you to avoid sin. But without being scared of Him, Hashem, there's no end to the number of sins that we do. So Be'ezrat Hashem, this will get us one step closer to becoming more zealous for Hashem, more truthful, more honest, more fearful of Hashem, and closer to Him ultimately, And Be'ezrat Hashem, get more and more people to come to His direction, to Shurat HaTorah, and to learning His truth. Baruch Adonai Le'olam. Amen.