Rabbi Eli Mansour - EMET

[Music] shabbat over mubarak Bill Schuette Arab annum and all the members that are here tonight on behalf of this wonderful organization called Ahmet I wasn't really given talking points tonight which I appreciate that I like to speak my mind I met with the rabbi on Thursday and he gave me a briefing of what your organization does I was blown away it's hard for me to imagine that we have such thorough proper organizations that are doing the job the right way as you heard in the in the video from love not judgmental soft hands white gloves and it's it's producing especially in this community it's producing results I want to talk about the name of your organization Amit I think it's very appropriate that you chose it well I know that you know the word Amit means truth but I don't think you realize the depth and the weight that this word carries you know the Midrash says under pursue concealing Rosh devaraja omit the Meera Malik said when God began his Torah the beginning of the Bible he opened the Torah with his signature the Gomera says in key to vote that when God signs he signs his name omit vadhana Elohim omit so when God writes the Torah he signs his name in the beginning almost like an artist that if you look in the bottom right corner of the picture you'll see the signature so the Midrash asks where do you see the word omit in the beginning of the Torah well if you take the first three words Bereshit bara Elohim well the last letter of bitte sheet is a tough Vala the last letter is an olive and eloheem is a mem well if you boggle the letters around it spells omit so therefore God put a signature right in the beginning and if you look at the end of creation after the six days when God finally rested it says a shared bara Elohim Allah assault that God rested from the work that he did and if you look at those words shell bara the last letter of bara is an Olive Elohim is a mem and last thought is a tough again you have Amit so God put his name in the beginning of the creation and at the end of the creation but there's a great rabbi called Ramayana Taniya shits he explained it in a much deeper level it's a question that I always had and maybe you've thought about it also when God started the Torah he starts it with the letter bit bear this sheet and the question is obvious you know why didn't God start the tour how would I live I mean so he could say what it is sheet no I'm not saying you just thought I make up in the word it doesn't exist but God can do anything he wants he could say Elohim but I'll start with an Aleph so some say he did start with an Aleph because really the torah begins when God gave the Ten Commandments and the Ten Commandments begin with anoche so there's your Aleph okay that's an answer but the question is start the Torah with an owl if instead God skips the a leap and starts with the bet Bereshit why if you're not alive it says something incredible it's a little mathematical but you don't need to calculate if what I'm gonna say we'll do fine if you take the word omit well it's an Aleph it's a manner tough the numerical value of those three letters is 441 I know that number doesn't mean anything to you but it means a lot because if you take the letters or the numbers four four one and you make what's called misspelled cotton which means you count those letters four plus four plus one you get to the magic number of nine anytime you see a number nine grab it hold on to it the nine is the number of amid as opposed to the opposite of Emmett which clearly is not your organization would be shake it well shake head is a sheen of coffee and adesh machine is three hundred in the corpus one hundred Naresh is two hundred shake it actually equals six hundred well if you do the same system six plus zero plus zero you get six well that means the number six represents shake it now I don't mean to offend you if you're sitting on Table six tonight I have no intention of offending anybody but I'm talking theoretical nine is the number of Amit and six is the number of shake it the kabbalah talks about the salat now let's talk a little about numbers in mathematics if you start counting from the number one three digits one two three just three digits 1 + 2 + 3 i could do that without even using my hands one plus two plus three equals six now we don't like that number so let's forget about one two three let's go to the next three numbers four five six well 4 plus 5 is 9 9 + 6 is 15 1 5 that's 6 again doesn't work I don't like that well let's try it one more time we did one two three four five six among doing one more seven eight nine it's gotta work now 7 plus 8 is 15 15 plus 9 is 24 2 4 6 again you're right so it's not a good idea to start counting from the number one so rebus says well how about you start counting from the number two so let's do the same experiment but this time we start from the number two two plus three plus four you have it two three four is actually nine that's omit five six seven is 18 1 and 8 it's 9 again two three four five six seven eight nine 10 that equals 27 2 plus 7 is 9 so the rabbi has an experiment that's proven and you can do this forever I don't have forever tonight but you could do it forever when you stop from one you'll always get to shake it when you start from 2 you'll always get to omit so when the torah begins it doesn't want to start with an Aleph because if you start with an Aleph starting with the one you get to shake it so the pursuit says rush Dave Erica Amit you told us started with the letter that represents Amit the letter bed because when you start counting from the number 2 you'll always come to a summation of nine rostov and it can emit and there's other fascinating things about the number 9 which is Amit you could try it yourself I won't go through the whole room tonight I did the experiment before I came anything that you attach the number nine to will always bring you back to the number nine when this Amit Amit will always come back to the truth for example my name is le aho but you could do with your name as well but I did it with my name the numerical value of early hours 52 it's an easy one I know five into a seven not talking about that well it could've been worse it could have been six but nonetheless in the au equals 52 take your name whatever your name is Raphael sudah Avraham Yaakov doesn't matter what your name is it doesn't matter even if it's a long name you know supercalifragilisticexpialidocious my name is take your name I'm taking my name Elia ho and I'm adding 9 to it I'm not adding I'm the time set by 9 multiplied it by 9 I'm adding omit to my name 52 times 9 I did the math before I got here it's a difficult one it equals 468 okay it's a random number that number means nothing to me four six eight well 4 plus 6 is 10 plus 8 it's 18 1 + 8 is 9 you could do that with any of your names any Jewish name that you have always times it by 9 which is the number of Ahmet whatever number you're gonna get count the numbers up it'll always come back to the number 9 that's the secret that you can clap for that [Applause] while the hope I don't lose your attention because now you're all gonna be calculating your names please give me just a few more minutes you can do it after I leave it works I'll leave you my number if it doesn't work you can call me back well what I really like to come to talk to you about tonight is not numbers and you know different tricks like that although it's fascinating I want to tell you an encounter that I had because well I'm not so hands-on like your organization is really dealing with every patient in a very very personal way I give lectures to large audiences like this I traveled the world unfortunately I don't have too much interaction I get up at the pulpit I give my speech hopefully it's accepted I escape and I go on to the next one but one time during my escape I got caught and a student caught me at the door and said you always say that the tourism a tourism it to us truth why are you so sure of that there's a lot of books in the library this person actually told me referred to me of a book I wasn't aware of it's called the book of etiquette it was written by Emily Post it's a big book I found out and she actually tells you what's right him it's her own she tells you what's considered ethical and what's considered unethical she tells you what's considered proper conduct and which considered improper huh so his question was why not at least when it comes to ethics I know Emily Post might not be in authority and he'll kocha but she clearly is not an authority on you know he'll caught Yom Tov or the laws of kaduche eeen so we're not going to trust her for that but why can't we trust her to give us ethics she's an authority after all she sold millions and millions of copies of this book so why do you come and tell us that ethics and values must emanate from the Torah because of tourism it why not use the book of etiquette that was the question I'd like to give you the short answer I'm so excited that our organization its starting point is the book is the Torah because only the Torah has truth what do I mean to say today on college campuses there's a new phenomenon that's going on I don't know if you're aware of it well a lot of you are educated and sophisticated so you might have heard of it it wasn't around when we were young it's called relativism relative you buy their heard of the theory of relativity but this is not that this is the concept of relative is relativism which means when I talk and use a word the word has to be explained in the context that I'm saying it relative to other things for example if I say this man over here is very rich well that's a relative terminology who am i comparing him to if I'm comparing him to a pauper indeed he's very rich but if I'm comparing him to Bill Gates so he's really not that rich it's a relative terminology if I say this boy is the smartest kid in the class it's relative I don't know the classes if the class is in Harvard a bunch of geniuses that's a compliment but if it's not in that type of situation where the kids are really not so sharp so then that smart compliment is relative but today today's society has taken things that are not really subject to a relative interpretation certain things are what we called as was mentioned absolute like one plus one equals two that's absolute that's not relative to anything and this speaker over here is black it's not relative to anything it's a fact it's absolute but today everybody has their own what we call relative truths the truth means whatever you want it to mean whatever is comfortable to you and therefore we have to respect everybody's interpretation of how they define what used to be absolute terms what used to be genuine concepts now it's well I don't look at it that way so if somebody would come in and say rabbi took offense I heard of you when his speech said that that speaker over there was black I believe that it's white now in the olden days we would ask him for his mother's name and put him on the team list every flasher them up and that would be that would be totally acceptable you know unless he's colorblind if he's colorblind then you know we don't judge that but if he if he claims that it's white we said miss keen he's a you know the poor guy today however you can't say he's wrong you have to say well we have to agree to disagree we have to be very politically correct that you will look at it as white and I respect that I have no problem with that but I look at it as black so we took something that's absolute and we've turned it now into relativism it's relative to the way you see it and therefore there's no truth anymore everybody has their own interpretation of truth and I don't want to spoil your dinner but to show you how far off the rails we've gone with this there was recently a case actually in the hospital in New York well you shouldn't be shocked that this type of ideology reaches New York it's usually it's created here it's it's hot it's it's hibernated in New York what happened lady was in the hospital she gave birth the doctor who I guess is naive he doesn't know about relativism so when the baby was born he turned to the mom and he said congratulations it's a baby boy and she said I'm offended we're gonna wait till he grows up or it grows up to decide what it wants to be you know how dare you come along and decide for this child now when I was young a boy was a boy a girl was a girl there's telltale signs to figure that out it's a very simple equation you don't got to do mathematics for that it's very obvious and that's not relative I'm not a relative boy to somebody else that's something that's fact I don't need to compare myself to other people to know what I am but today well you have to let the person decide that it's very personal so please don't tell me what I am you have to be very careful today so if you're on a college campus when you see somebody walking down the street you have to say wow what a nice person you are because you don't want to commit now somebody did that and they still got into trouble they were in a college campus they saw somebody I said be careful don't commit what it is because you know the person has his own relative truth and he decides what he wants to decide don't don't don't don't refer this gender or her agenda it's fine thanks for telling me huh I don't want to put my foot in my mouth so he goes up to the lift the person's work and says you know something you're a very fine person it comes along and says I'm a giraffe oh I didn't know that I'm sorry I didn't realize you're mature have I was I was so caught up thinking if you were a boy or a girl I didn't even think I'd live and think that you could be yeah because IIIi I look at myself as an animal okay fine a let's let's pet the giraffe let's take a picture with the jura ever you know and I respect you for that I respect you for that's what you believe you are you know all the respect it's laughable but this is what's happening today in society there's no more truth there's no more absolutes so you need to go to a book that's not subject to political correctness it's not subject to bias or prejudice now the only entity in the world that's not subject to any of these things is God everybody else that's gonna give you an ethical opinion including Emily Post it's subjective subjective means that it's based on their personal opinions and their biases and therefore you're not gonna get a real pure opinion of right and wrong and as a matter of fact it'll change over time something that's Ahmet cannot change the truth doesn't change one plus one equal to a thousand years ago and it will equal two and a thousand years from now it's genuine it's absolute where is if you look at some of the ethics that Emily Post writes in a book she had to revise the book I think 15 times already because what was considered wrong in one generation now becomes right and right because because it's synthetic it's man-made and people's ideas of right and wrong just fluctuate with times based on different pressures I'll give you and again I don't want to offend anybody that means I might offend somebody but it's not my intention put it that way you know in this country this great country the United States of America when it was founded in early 1776 whenever it was the founding fathers were religious people they had judeo-christian values they wanted there was a movement by Jefferson that actually the the official language of America they wanted they wanted it to be Hebrew you imagine that Hebrew the official SST it's the language of the Bible but then they decided against it they made it Spanish but the point is but the point is the first the first founding fathers were religious people and they believed that there's a certain sanctity of life sanctity of life they believed in it those days if if somebody would come along and take the life of an unborn child it was considered a federal crime the United States was punished at with death death and nobody questioned it you know that they understood lot that it's out and they understood it you know don't murder it's one of the Ten Commandments many years later as society thinks they're getting more sophisticated cause society always thinks that they evolved to become better people although we know that that's not always true as society evolves they make more lethal weapons and more you know different ways to kill more people so society doesn't always evolve in a more progressive way nonetheless nine judges in Washington well their Supreme Court justices they put on their black robes gives them extra wisdom and they started to ponder they turning their heads and the pandering which is not a legal question really it's a philosophical question and there came along and they said well we all agree let's let's take a vote first who agrees that you shouldn't murder nine nothing on that one that was unanimous lot did sow don't murder all right now we get to the second question when does life begin oh it's a good question we never thought about that so the justices thought that now there's no law book you can go look in that so this is just an opinion you have nine people that are going to decide for 300 million people based on their vote which is a very narrow vote anyway and they end up deciding you know what after thinking about it for a couple of days I must be where the most experienced to answer this question cuz we're wearing black robes and we have you know tenure for life so we know we can't get this wrong we have decided now that life begins outside of the womb that's it everybody agree not everybody but we have a majority so be it that's the law of the land so therefore if life begins outside the womb we really don't care what you do as long as the baby doesn't emerge beautiful they made a new definition a definition that the word hadn't heard for 2,000 years that's my point something that we thought was absolute which should have been absolute but when you let you means start getting involved in it for whatever their bias is I have all talk on what their bias was it's clear that we're being influenced by a lot of things but look what happened they redefined well it's very crafty and clever they didn't read the fine murder because they said you can't murder it just to find we defined what life is well obviously if you read the final life it's gonna affect then how do you define murder okay fine let's say we accept it but it didn't end there a case came to the courts I'm just trying to show you why your values can only come from the Torah what happens the old lady she's in the hospital and she's on a respirator or feeding tube and they come along or the doctors and they say listen she's really not gonna make it so we want to stop feeding her and the children say no what do you mean stop feeding I could just stop feeding her this is her mother yeah but she's not gonna make it anyway so we want to stop feeding on it stop feeding are you gonna stop with her that she's gonna die the case came to the Supreme Court the fast forwarding now they had a big dilemma because they already decided that life begins outside the room and this 95 year old lady was out of the room room already for 95 years so there's our home we've got a problem here she's outside the room already that's a problem I can't put her back in the room because he could put it back in the home then we could kill her that's not a problem but she's outside the room already and we can't we can't get it back into the room so how could we kill her so we have to figure it out oh well you know what let's go back to talking about life life must be defined by quality after all what is life life is about quality of life you could eat you could sleep you could do the waltz you could go you could hit a tennis ball you could go to the theater that's all things that we do it it's quality now let's put out a new definition and see if it applies to this lady can she eat poor things she can't can she walk she can't could she golf no can she swing a tennis racket no she can't do any of these things so she really has no quality well according to our new definition she has no quality she has no life and they ruled pull the plug you see what happens when you let humans start to play around with values starts with one definite and don't think it's over don't think it's over it'll it'll keep on degress and keep on sinking and falling to lower lower levels you can't rely on synthetic values because synthetic values are gonna change from time to time and they take things that are not subject to relativism they shouldn't be subject to change values must come from God and God's book is omit it's the ultimate truth you see I don't know how to ethicist but we were young I don't know if you did they do it over here when we were young our parents used to read us books before we went to sleep I don't know why they read us these books they should read us stories from the prophets divyam homage but those days wasn't accepted you'd read you know fairy tales and one night my mother read to me the story of Robin Hood you might have heard of that story Robin Hood used to if I remember correctly haven't heard in a many many years Robin Hood used to rob from the rich and give to the poor and the book is basically saying those rich people have so much money have a lot of money it's not right and the poor people have no money so Robin Hood would settle the school he would go in the middle of the night rob from the rich and give to the poor now obviously as we get older we realized that this was a book to indoctrinate young minds into socialism because Robin Hood basically was a communist but put that on the side put that on the side when we were all young for whatever reason we always looked at Robin Hood as a hero because you know the rich guy that he stole from he's not gonna feel it anyway and the poor guy could really use the money so it's a win-win the rich guy is not gonna change his life and the poor guy it made a good change in his life so Robin is a hero but now plug Robin Hood tada he's a felon he's a crook the man is a thief he's a gun knob does the Torah allow us to steal from the rich to give to the poor but again if you let humans decide that they'll say well yes stealing is wrong but if you're doing it divide wealth evenly then it's not called stealing that's called equality just change the terminologies play around with it it's all semantics anyway and you start legalizing the worst crimes and we can go on and on I'll just conclude with one more example before I you know bless all of you I'm very impressed you know I don't know why God put certain people in certain places at certain points in history probably asked Allah to do with things that are beyond our comprehension with goulash a moat and all that stuff but the fact that you're at the forefront of this movement what is it good what is it good that you're involved now in trying to stem off assimilation and try to bring back a mere true values to these kids I don't think you could appreciate when I have much of this video I'm seeing these kids not what they are but I could only imagine what they would have been now they have sudah they have an image at silliman know him you could see on them you see the image of God you see their speeches refined they're talking in a proper way and that's at a credit of M ed and its supporters so the fact that God has put you in this position you should consider yourself very very fortunate and very very lucky somebody that saves one soul and the Jewish nation as if he saved the whole entire world and you people are involved in saving the world a thousand times over and over every single day so I'll conclude you have my my compliments and you have my full emotional and moral support many years ago in our community the Syrian community in Brooklyn we got a deal for the summer it's a resort on the Jersey Shore in South Jersey they came out with a journal the town is the town came out with a journal celebrating its hundredth year it's not such a old town hundred years and everybody who lives in the town gets a journal they delivered to the house so I got my journal I'm looking at it it's nice to see what the town looked like 100 years ago with the police station looked like what ocean air when you look like with the you know nobody or the different place that we know what looks like today is tea with 100 years ago so I said this would make a good topic for a speech you know the rabbi's see everything in the terms of speech so I took the journal and I brought it to the shul and that was the topic of Shabbat speech and I got up and said ladies and gentlemen I read the journal cover to cover but my most exciting part of the journal is on page 153 I have it here and it's a picture and under the picture it says men and a woman going to Phillips Beach on a Sunday and all of a sudden the member said rabbi rabbi this is your favorite picture in the book this is inappropriate to a rabbi to even look at such pictures men and ladies going to the beach on a Sunday afternoon in the summer we thought that maybe you get excited from the old synagogue from the I said no I want to show you the picture and the picture is quite amazing you see a man wearing shorts pestis knee socks closed toe shoes he has a hat on a button shirt he's only an umbrella I don't know why had an umbrella was a sunny day he had an umbrella is it he's standing next to his wife she's wearing a house dress best her elbows best in these she has stockings closed-toe shoes a bonnet and a pocketbook and they go into the beach I said to myself it could have said men and women on the way to Cali dre on Yom Kippur and I would have said great I was like about over they were very religious I will be happy if people would come to shul today the way used to go to the beach a hundred years ago and they write on the caption because if you didn't come dressed to the beach you can get a fine for indecent exposure that was gleam a hundred years ago now obviously I don't go to the beach that often I don't know if they're still wearing bonnets and and pocketbooks I have guys as my shul don't wear socks forget about going to the beach they don't wear socks to shul so what happened what happened is again you let the you let society you give society modesty you let them decide modesty well in one generation they'll tell you this is what's the right code and then a hundred years later they'll say ah that's laughable the dress code now is this and they'll keep on changing she'll never know well what's the right thing with a right are we right is the right ahead of us when we reach the right yet how you gonna know it's only one way better sheet bara Elohim brush the very car Amit you gotta go back to the book to the number nine Aleph is the first letter in the alphabet mem is the middle letter and tuff is the last letter if it's Amit it's gotta be Amit from the beginning to the middle to the end from a hundred years ago to one hundred years from now to the present it does not change it does not lend itself to relativism it must be absolute so I think that you chose the right name for your organization Ament Moshe I met the Torah Torah met and we must thank God I said bahar bono McCullough I mean that you chose us from other nations when at Ilana torrid not a synthetic Emily Post book of etiquette that changes with the wind that's been modified and reprinted 15 times and it'll be reprinted 15 more times before Messiah comes let us recommit ourselves to our personal commitment to our Torah but tonight more importantly let's recommit ourselves both financially and both mentally and morally and emotionally to this great organization to you I say his school VRMs live of cam Quanah me Halim LaDonna Amen thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music]