SATAN'S MITZVAH | Uncovering An Urgent Warning From The Past | BH FILMS

Now, have you ever heard of the Satan's Mitzvah? Well, I will tell you, Kareem, is actually closer to home than you think. Satan is actually looking for people to do Mitzvahs from the Torah. Some of you are going to be shocked. Your local Rabbi may be an expert in making Mitzvahs for the sake of the Satan. What does it matter the truth? As long as everybody's happy. Before Messiah arrives, there'll be an enormous darkness, the spiritual darkness, just like it was in Egypt. But, at some point, the light of Hashem will come upon you. But, how do we survive? How are we going to be able to walk in the darkness until the light of Hashem shines on us? The answer says the Hafetz Chaim, a small light can overcome big darkness. Just as it says in Proverbs chapter 6 verse 23, HaMelech tells us, "For the Mitzvah, for the commandment, is a lamp, and the Torah is light, and reproving Mussar is the way of life." If you're looking for light because you have darkness in your life, darkness in your community, darkness in your marriage, that's because you're lacking the ultimate light. You're lacking Torah. But, if you're only focusing on the customs, then how did you connect that to the Torah? If you're only focusing on eating cholent on Shabbat, how did you connect that to the Torah? If you're only focusing on the Mitzvah itself without connecting it to the Torah, you're not creating light. You're not taking advantage, and that's where Mussar comes in. That's where discipline comes in. Character development comes in. And thereby says the Hafetz Chaim, "Darkness is not chased away with sticks. Darkness is chased away by light, by publicizing as much Torah truth as possible, united cure, united outreach by those that fear Hashem." When the leading goat has lost his vision, has lost his ability to see, when the leading goat has become blind, he doesn't stop walking. He doesn't stop going. He continues to go, and the flock follows him. And as he hits different ditches and different pits, the entire flock follows him. And so, too, says Rashi, "When Hakadosh Baruchu wishes to punish his flock, he causes the appointment of unqualified leaders who make catastrophic decisions for the people." What you see in the world is not a surprise. In fact, what you see in the world is Hashem's fulfillment of what he told us will happen if we do not go in the right path. The shepherd blinded the goats that were leading. And what ends up happening is, you have blind leaders, sometimes by choice, sometimes not by choice. This is one of the punishments that's happening to our generation. This is part of the darkness. Why is this happening? There's no problem if you want to have a Hanukkah party at your shul. As long as it's a kosher party, there's no mixed dancing and inappropriate and immoral behavior, there's no problem with having a Purim party. There's no problem of of having a challah party. There's no problem with those things. As long as everything is kosher, there's no problem. But, yet, these things have somehow turned into the focus in countless communities around the world. The focus is who can have the best event for kids, the best circus so the kids can jump to the sky, the best a horse and carriage, the best tournament of some kind, the best football team or some other team to compete, the best baker of challah or sufganiyot or something else. These things have turned into the priority. The costume parties, the shidduchim parties, these have turned into the ikar, into the prime, into the most important instead of a shiur Torah like this that's going to tell people they must do teshuvah, a shiur Torah that's going to tell people they're not allowed to drive on Shabbat, a shiur Torah that's going to tell people that wasting seed, adultery, immorality, uh immodesty, all of those things will eliminate your ability to go to heaven ever if you don't do teshuvah. They're ruining your life here and eternally. A shiur Torah that's going to tell people the truth of what Hakadosh Baruchu said. When are they going to learn Torah? No, no, no, listen, these parties, it's because we're mekariv. Okay, you're mekariv. You brought the singer all the way from Israel to to to sing so everybody get together. I got it. Fine, nothing against it. Question is, when is the Torah part start? No, we do it slowly. Okay, slowly. So, wait, so so after he finishes performing, then you do it? No, no, no, Rabbi, we we we don't do that at our shul. What do you mean you don't do that at your shul? What do you do at your shul? What do you do at your yeshiva? How come not a single bachur in your yeshiva learned anything about about wasting seed until he already became addicted, became a victim of society, and had to come to me so I could take him out of Gehenna? How come you didn't teach him? No, we don't teach in our community. Are you better than Gedolei Yisrael that mentioned it on a regular basis? How come? So, what is it that you teach? What is it that you do for your community, Mr. Rabbi? What is it that you do for your community, Mr. board member, Mr. community leader? But, these types of things happen where sometimes there are good Rabbis with criminal boards, criminal leaders that are pushing the Rabbis against the wall where they can't do anything. And sometimes the Rabbi is the chief criminal, chief criminal officer, CCO. So, when you tell people, "Listen, many people are driving on Shabbat in this community. Many people are in the cash advance in this community. That's against the Torah. Many people do not know how to read Hebrew in this community. Many people do not know how to pray in this community. Many people do not learn Torah at all in this community. Many people are doing all types of things that are against the laws of morality as well as the laws of Torah in this community. Maybe the Rabbi could, perhaps, teach us about morality, teach us some Mussar." No, no, no, we can't really do that. Uh we go slowly, slowly. 30 years he's been a Rabbi in the community, and everyone is still mechallel Shabbat for the most part, stealing in their business for the most part, cheating on their wives or husbands for the most part, continuing to be criminals. But, they have a Rabbi, and they donate tons and tons of money every year, and they have not a building. They have a neighborhood. Why? Blind leaders, blind sheep sometimes lead the entire flock off the cliff. Chayei Adam was written about 200 years ago by a Chacham named Rabbi Avraham Danzig. He was also a businessman, a merchant. But, he was a talmid chacham, and he gathered together all of the Mitzvahs that have to do with the day-to-day of the average Jew. In the beginning of this book, the Chayei Adam says, "There was once a person that wanted to get some new clothes. But, instead of going to the clothing store and buying clothes, he said, 'Let me just sew up the clothes myself. No problem. Go.' No, no, I don't know how to sew. So, wait, you want to make yourself clothes, but you don't know how to make clothes? No. Okay, so, maybe you should go buy clothes. No, no, no, I'm going to learn. What are you going to do until you learn? No, no, I'm going to learn right away. Okay, fine, no problem. A week later, you see the guy is still walking around with ripped clothes. What what what's happening? Listen, this whole week I spent learning the foundation. What's the foundation? In order to make clothes, you need to have a needle. Wait, so, you looked at needles for a week? No, I studied the needles. What do you mean you studied the needles? I wanted to know not just the needle, I wanted to know where does the needle come from? So, I spent this whole week researching it, and I realized this is coming from metal. And then, next week, I'm leaving on a trip to Mongolia. Why? Because over there they have mines, and they they bring metal out of the ground. Huh? Yeah, yeah. So, the guy goes and spends his entire life learning about the needle, says Rav Danzig, until he dies still without clothes. This is the same as us, says Rav Elchanan Wasserman. Leaders are using all of the efforts, all of the resources to the point of exhaustion on the least important matters, leaving the generation naked of Torah. And the yetzer ra catches the leaders. And while there are those that yell out, "Hey, stop the thief! Ganav! Ganav! Thief! Thief!" The yetzer ra, the Satan, is so clever that he gets in between the masses. He goes next to the leaders. He goes among the bachurim. He goes among the community, among the board of directors. And he also starts screaming, "Ganav! Ganav!" As if it's not them, and everyone follows, "Yeah, ganav, he's the thief, he's over there." And they're all yelling in some aimless direction, "Catch the thief!" Reality, the yetzer ra, the Satan, has caught them, has confused them. Indeed, Rabbotai Kareem, the teachings of real Torah are not only paramount to an individual's development, they're paramount to community. And instead of teaching real Torah that's going to help people change, that's going to help people serve Hashem, be better people, be better husbands or wives, be better children, be better students, be better Rabbis, instead of teaching real Torah, the Satan has convinced the majority of people to spend their resources on food events. And instead of helping the community gain more merits, the leaders only help them gain more sins and calories. Rav Elchanan Wasserman says, "This is how the yetzer ra is playing with us. The Satan is giving us the idea of how to fight the Satan by giving us all types of strategies, creative ones, in order to bring people to the shul, bring people to the school, bring people to the event, bring a singer, bring a performer, bring food, bring different variety of food, bring business, bring business speakers, everything except bring Torah, using all possible strategies except teaching Torah. One of the ways that Satan fools people into one of his mitzvot is by having somebody in the community, whether it be the rabbi or somebody else, tell people, "Listen, you want to do a rare mitzvah? There's a mitzvah that's really rare. It's called the redemption of the firstborn, the redemption of the donkey, giving it to the coin." Okay, sure, but "How do I do this?" "Let's go to Eilat. We'll get a group of us. We'll rent the bus. And over there I already have the setup." So this so-called leader convinces 30, 40, 50, 60 people to go on a bus, spend 7 hours each way to go fulfill a mitzvah that takes 5 minutes, but wastes 14 hours. Other times they'll tell you, "Listen, you want to make a real rare mitzvah? Something that will touch your neshama?" Sure. "Let's go visit the tzaddikim that died 400 years ago." Okay, sure. "Where do we have to go?" "We have to fly to some end of the world place." "Yeah, but we have tzaddikim here. Why don't we just go to them?" "No, no, no, you want to go over there where you're going to spend 10, 15 hours on a plane each way, spend a fortune of money on tickets, on hotel, on food, and hopefully if it's even kosher, and spend a few days, spend a few weeks, and feel like a million bucks, feel like you're a tzaddik." Why? Cuz you went and you prayed in a grave that cost you 2 weeks of your life. What about using those 2 weeks and going to a beit midrash and learn for 2 weeks and use that money to go help the world of Torah, help the community do teshuvah. But the reality is avodah that people are much more inclined to go and spend 5, 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars on these types of so-called rare mitzvahs than they ever are to go and support Torah. Because these mitzvahs are being motivated and inspired by the Satan. Even though the mitzvah is from the Torah and if you do it, chazak ubaruch, you'll get rewarded for the mitzvah, but the cost of that mitzvah, the amount of time and resources that you have to exhaust in order to fulfill that mitzvah surely was not ideal and only the Satan will inspire you to do such a thing. The communities today are full of this. And the worst part of it all is that the Satan is so clever that since this mitzvah is rare, it makes those that are behind it feel righteous, so pure. A mezekeh rabim, he's already the master of kiruv he feels. "Look how many people I brought together." Yeah, the Satan helped you, of course. Did any of them make a mitzvah? Did any of them become close to Hashem as a result? Absolutely not. Why? Cuz Satan is behind all of it. But yet the Satan also gives people the illusion of feeling like they're tzaddikim. Avodah ikarin, sometimes a person could be doing a mitzvah that the Satan will make him believe this is a mitzvah that Hashem wants him to do. But in reality, the mitzvah has nothing to do with Hashem, has nothing to do with the Torah. It's just simply to serve his own purpose. He gives the friendly shiur that talks about shalom bayit every week just because it brings the best and the most crowd. He brings the shiur about raising children. He'll even talk to you about business, talk to you about the markets, he'll talk to you about the politics. He'll even give you a few sources from the secular world because he's more interested in the feedback than he is in the neshama or in helping them. But if you ask him, he thinks he's a great leader. He thinks he's helping people. In fact, even if you ask the people, "What do you think of this leader of yours?" "Oh, he's the best rabbi ever." If he's the best rabbi ever, how come you're still driving on Shabbat? How come you're still stealing in your business? How come you're still not modest? If he's the best rabbi in the world, you've been here for 20 years. How come you're still the same? "No, he connects me to Judaism." Which version of it? Apparently, there's a confusion here. And this is the false world we live in where there are blind leaders leading the flock off the cliff. But along the way, the leader sings and the flock repeats and the damage gets worse. The Gemara says that someone that used to learn Torah, a bachur went to yeshiva, learned for a few years, maybe even became an avreich, and something happened. He decided to stop, whatever excuse people use to fulfill their desires and calm their conscience at the same time. And he decided that he's going to abandon the way of Torah. He's going to go off the derech, off the path, become secular. And you see that those people that used to be religious, when they become secular, they become more secular than this most secular person in the world. The average secular Jew overall respects the Torah, respects the religious people, doesn't hate it. Some certainly hate it, but the one that used to be religious, they despise it. Their hate is greater than everybody else. Their hate of Torah scholars is greater than the hate that Hitler had to the Jews. Why? Because the Gemara tells us that as a person grows in Torah, the yetzer hara, the evil inclination with him also grows. But he has the tools to fight him. The yetzer hara of a bachur in yeshiva may seem like it's bigger than the world, but in reality, it's nothing in comparison to the yetzer hara of Rav Ovadia, even though you're never going to see Rav Ovadia sin because he had the tools, he had the Torah to fight the yetzer hara. But nonetheless, when a person grows in Torah, he has the tools to fight the Satan. But if he abandons the Torah, then what ends up happening is that he not only no longer has the tools to fight the Satan from convincing him to do a blog against the Torah, do a podcast against the Torah, write a book against the Torah, protest against the Torah, be an enemy of the Torah publicly, he doesn't have the tools to fight it anymore. In fact, his yetzer hara stays big. It's the yetzer hara of a Torah scholar. It's an enormous evil inclination. And that's why those that go off the derech hate Torah scholars more than everybody else because the Satan is now punishing them for torturing him all those years that they learned Torah. Cuz each time they learned Torah, it's like putting coals on his head. The Gemara says, "If he was metal, your Torah would melt him. If he was stone, your Torah learning will make him explode and crumble to nothing." But now that you've abandoned the Torah, he now takes revenge against the guy that used to be religious, putting him in a situation where he now, instead of desiring to learn more Torah, instead of desiring to do more mitzvot, he now desires to destroy it. Sometimes that person that's off the derech is actually a leader that maintains the image of a religious leader, but is heretic according to all accounts, telling people things that are against the Torah on a regular basis, changing the Torah, changing the face of the Torah where the Torah becomes an axe for him to destroy what he wants to destroy, cut whatever he wants to cut, build whatever he wants to build, no connection whatsoever to the real Torah. Rav Elchanan Wasserman says, "These blind leaders didn't come from nothing. Whether it's the blind leaders in politics or the blind leaders in the synagogue, they came from the fact that we have stopped teaching the most important as the most important and replaced it with the least important. We made the parties and the community affairs the priority of the community instead of the Torah and the learning of Torah as the priority. So when we have issues in our backyards, we know what the solution is. Simply replace the engine that is fueling this war against God. Torah is the cure to all ailments. It's the answer to all problems. If that's not the ideology in your household, if that's not the ideology in your school, in your synagogue, if you're celebrating the winning of a new president more than you're celebrating your average mitzvah, there's a problem. If you're celebrating the non-Jewish affairs, non-Jewish holidays more than you're celebrating Shabbat or any Yom Tov, that's a problem. That means there's a lacking of Torah. What ends up happening, avodah ikarin, is that the yetzer hara, the Satan, convinces people to do all types of things to make themselves feel righteous. The yetzer hara is going to convince you that this problem is not in your backyard. The yetzer hara is going to convince you that this problem is not so close to you. It's somewhere else. But if you're listening to this, that's because Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants you to listen to it because it's not just a problem that your friend has in his community or her community. It's a problem that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants you to take care of for you. Now some people are going to say, "No, no, no, I don't think you're right. Everything else you're right about except that one." And then they're surprised that they have problems. Avodah ikarin, sometimes the spiritual doctors, as the Rambam calls them, give us advice that perhaps a little bit bitter. Perhaps it's not what we wanted to hear. Perhaps it's not what we hoped to hear, but it's still what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to know. Rav Elchanan Wasserman gave us this guidance in order to fight and win the war of Amalek. We've learned quite a few different things in this series, but tonight we learned something that is closer to home than perhaps anything else because this affects every single community and every single household to a certain extent. Some more, some less. Be'ezrat Hashem, we will have the merit to apply all of these teachings to our lives, to our own families, to our own communities with such zeal and excitement that others will be inspired by it. In fact, with such strength, the Satan who's been navigating the ship in so many places for so long will feel the pain of the new Torah on his head and he won't even come back anymore. Thank you very much for learning with me. May Hashem bless each and every single one of you with success to implement all of these teachings to your lives and your communities. Anyone that wants to donate and support, you can donate cryptocurrency as well as the traditional donations on our website beezrathashem.org. On the donate page over there, there's different options whether you want to send a check or wire or credit card or cryptocurrency and in fact, even stock. Either way, Rabotai, there's a lot to do, there's a lot to learn and there's a lot, be'ezrat Hashem, to help. But take advantage of the offer of getting one of these boxes into your community because of course, we listen to the sages not only about mitzvot, but also about the strategy. So aside from giving everyone an opportunity to do kiruv and do a mitzvah by giving them one of these amazing posters that look just like this, very good quality plastic, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, but we have a little bit of a secret weapon in each and every one of them. Anyone that wants to support kiruv will have an opportunity by scanning this QR code. Anyone that wants to get inspired will also have another QR code where they can watch a shiur Torah. Either way, the goal of this, Rabotai, is to help Am Yisrael do more mitzvot and to learn more Torah. And by combining the mitzvot of the Torah with the learning of the Torah, we can win this war against Amalek. Be'ezrat Hashem, we will. Come on, guys.