The Jewish Joy of Sex

2008-12-26T13:54:00.000-08:00

Within every Jew lies immense amounts of untapped potential. In utilizing the power of your sexual drive, you can move mountains, protect Israel, and succeed in all aspects of your life.

Part 1 - For Zions Sake I Will Not Be Silent
Part 2 - Where the Real Fight Is
Part 3 - A Personal Story
Part 4 - The Steel Caged Match for the Cosmic Title
Part 5 - The Greatest Feeling in the World
Part 6 - The Features of the Mitzvah
Part 7 - Guarding the Brit and Guarding the Land of Israel: The Connection is REAL!
Part 8 - The World is Already at War With Israel -- and That Means You!
Part 9 - We Can Acheive Peace in the Middle East - Right Here and Right Now
Part 10 - Why We Are Worse Then the KKK
Part 11 - The Mystical Consequences of This Sin -- Based on the Kaballah
Part 12 - A Once in a Creation Opportunity
Part 13 - Mind Control
Part 14 - The Shema
Part 15 - The Bigger the Sinner -- The Better the Tsuva!
Part 16 - The Righteous Fall Seven Times
Part 17 - Fixing a Broken Soul -- and Truly Experiencing It's Potential!
Part 18 - The Ultimate Cure All for Any Affliction!
Part 19 - Standing Up to A Bully
P art 20 - The Fight For Your Family
Part 21 - Tishmor Torah, Yishmor Medina
Part 22 - Aliyah to a Higher State
Part 23 - The Commandment Not to Regret

Part 24 - The Final Balance

Twenty Plus Ways to Help Israel

2008-12-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

Five Ways to Help Israel With Your Prayers and Torah Learning Without Changing Your Life
Help the Sick, Feed the Hungry, Care for Victims of Terror
Perform Acts of Tsuva for The Nation of Israel
Learn to Speak and Understand Modern Hebrew
Visit Israel for the First Time
Keep Coming Back and Make Your Next Trip Better
Make Aliyah
Support the Troops
Volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces as a Non-Combat Volunteer (Ages 18-85!)
Serve in the Israeli Intelligence Services
Serve in the Israel Defense Forces as a Combat Soldier (Ages 18-23)
Fight for Israel on College Campuses
Join Pro-Israel Organizations Here, Volunteer for Israel in Israel
Speak Out by Writing Opinion Letters
Get the Israeli Side of Daily Events in the Middle East
Write to Your Elected Official on Behalf of Israel
Learn About Israel's Greatest Accomplishments
Learn to Defend the Israeli Side of the Conflict in the Middle East
Discover What Our Enemies are Saying About Israel and The Western World
Reduce How Much Oil You Buy From Our Enemies
Buy Israel
Invest in Israel Bonds

Kosher Downloading

2008-12-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

Top Kosher downloads and streaming video

Chabad.org - Hundreds of video lectures, thousands of audio lectures - ALL FREE. They are planning a Jewish.TV site.

Aish HaTorah - They also have hundreds of video and audio clips.

Torah Anytime - Over 5,000 video lectures! I strongly recommend Rabbis Schafier and Wallerstein.

Divine Information - Arguably one of the best sites for learning on the net. Hundreds of audio and video lectures in both Hebrew and English by Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi covering topics such as Kabbalah and Science, Life after Life, Science and Torah. There is even a debate between Rabbi Mizrachi and a christian priest!

Lazer Beams - Over 100 video lectures by Rabbi Brody covering Emunah!

Over 1,000 documentaries of the past 50 years. (NOTE: according to the makers of this site, they have permission from all the producers to publish this material)

Israel National News TV - news clips and commentary about life in Israel.

Videos at Yiddele.com

Torah Media.com

Bloomberg TV
Israel Channel 10 - live
National Geographic Channel - all sorts of videos, full episodes, movies, and clips about the world at large
Discovery Channel
The History Channel
The Biography Channel

If you have any ideas for free channels or good sites for Kosher downloading, please email me here

Published Articles on Shmirat HaBrit

2008-11-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

KOSHER DOWNLOADING -- HOW TO HAVE A GREAT TIME ENJOYING VIDEOS WITHOUT THE RISK OF HAVING COMMITTED THE SIN OF THEFT

Breslov World:

The World of Fantasy
Thought Control
David's Story
Electronic Adultery
Slaves No More
Teshuva: A Cage Fight
Casually Devestating

Aish HaTorah:

Jdate Rehab
Faith and the Stock Market

2008-10-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

Part 24 – Final Balance

We live in scary times. Russia is no longer a defeated Cold War adversary. Terrorism is a constant threat. From an embassy in Jakarta, to a restaurant in Jerusalem, to a store across the street nobody knows when the next strike will hit. Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of international terror, is less than a decade away from mastering the technology of a nuclear weapon. They already have the capability to deliver their weapons to as far as Europe, How long will it take them to make rockets capable of reaching the United States? Twenty years ago, Israel’s “Palestinian problem” consisted of young men throwing rocks. Since then, they have graduated to handguns, semi-automatic weapons, and light artillery. Today they have rockets.

Along with the new Palestinian threat, Israel has to fight enemies outside its borders. Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are still actively involved in trying to destabilize the Jewish State. Constant terror threats from Palestinians living in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt make these countries quasi-enemies as well. As if that weren’t enough, the entire world has judged that the Arabs have the moral high ground. As unbelievable as it may seem, Israel has to constantly justify its existence to Europe, the United Nations, and the international media.

At any moment there can be another Lebanon war. On any day we may face another 9-11. In an instant America can attack Iran and bring us to the brink of Armageddon.

We live in very scary times.

It’s easy to assume that G-d is standing in judgment, waiting for the final Armageddon to wipe out all of us that haven’t lived absolutely perfect lives. One would guess that we are living in an age of depravity, despair, and death.

Guess again.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. We are commanded to have faith in Hashem even as the sword touches our neck.

Throughout history, Hahsem has sent His children countless miracles. This especially applies to the world we currently live in. For the first time in human history, there are more observant Jews today than in the previous generation. Never in history has there been such a mass movement back to Torah and back to Hashem. Children are teaching their parents Torah on an unprecedented scale in Jewish History.

The last 60 years has seen half of the Jewish People come home. A promise made over three thousand years ago is being realized right before our eyes. From the four corners of the world, over 5 million Jews now live in the Holy Land. Less than 20 years ago, we witnessed the biggest mass exodus of Jews from their place of birth to the Land of Israel since Moses led us out of Egypt. This generation will be the first generation since the era of King David where the majority of Jews live in the Land of Israel.

100 years ago, nobody thought any of this could be possible.

We learn from the Torah that Hashem can bring Redemption within a blink of an eye. A situation can go from total peril to a universal happiness in an instant! That is the power of Hashem. That is the opportunity He gave us when He put us here on earth to serve His Will. One moment we are mired in Egypt, broken after the yoke of 410 years of slavery. The next, Hashem is sending us His miracles as we become a free people – secure in our Holy Land.

In May of 1967, we were facing another Holocaust. Three massive armies mobilized to wipe us out. Even the most optimistic general’s were commissioning Rabbis to find parks for mass graves. A month later we are dancing at the Kotel. In 1948, 7 Arab armies with the backing of the British Empire went to war with Israel to wipe her off the face of the earth. 2 months later, Israeli tanks are rolling towards the Sinai. 2 years later, Israel is welcoming 500,000 Jews from Arab countries back home.

Redemption can come in an instant.

It took the Romans 100,000 troops to conquer all the lands in their empire. It took them another 100,000 troops to suppress the revolt of our mothers and fathers in Judea. Had we not fought a civil war while we were fighting the Romans, we would have defeated them.

It took the British 100,000 troops to subdue, and control India. It took them another 100,000 troops to control the Jewish population in Israel. The British maintained control over India for over a century. Israel, about one fiftieth the size of India with 2% of its population, threw out the British in less than 3 decades. Such is the power of the Jewish Will. Such is the scope of the miracles Hashem sends to His people.

Millennia ago, Gidon fought over 100,000 Midianites and Ismaelites with only 300 men. Hashem specifically stated to Gidon that He was sending a miracle to the Jewish People. Gidon’s army of 300 men defeated over 100,000 of our enemies. In the time of Hezekiah, one of the righteous Kings of Israel, the Assyrians surrounded the walls of Jerusalem with 185,000 men. Instead of surrendering, Hezekiah prayed to Hashem. Redemption came in the blink of an eye. When the Jews woke up the next morning, every single soldier was dead. Hashem blessed The Jewish People with a victory against 185,000 soldiers without sending a single man to battle. Never in the history of mankind has such a war been won.

Hahsem, in His great Love, Compassion, and Mercy teaches us that any tsuva, no matter how late, or how simple, or how desperate, can bring His miracles to the world which will overcome any adversity, no matter how dire the circumstances.

Recall the story of Chanukah. The Greeks were defiling the Land of Israel for years. They brought their idolatry, sexual depravity, and godless brand of intellectualism to our shores. Instead of fighting, we accepted their ways. Many of us even assimilated completely into Greek culture. Despite the countless number of Jews committing the absolute worst abominations in the Holiest of places, a small group of Jews asked Hashem for a miracle.

We didn’t deserve it. Even the Kohanim and Levites went along with waves of Jewish assimilation before we so much as lifted a finger against Greek influence.

What position were a handful of Jewish Zealots in to ask Hashem to deliver the greatest world power into their hands?

Despite the desperate, unworthy, and very overdue prayers for National Redemption by a small minority of the Jewish Nation, Hashem sent a miracle.

We won.

Go back 1,000 years.

Even as Hashem was redeeming the Jewish People from Egypt, we were worshipping idols! The Book of Exodus states that G-d heard the cry of our suffering and remembered us.

No matter how far gone we think we are. It is never too late to ask Hashem for a miracle, and it is never too late for Him to grant us one.

Rabbi Kook, one of the great Rabbis of the State of Israel, says the following about tsuva:

“Great and exalted is the pleasure of tsuva. The searing flame of pain caused by sin purifies the will and refines the character of a person to an exalted, sparkling purity until the great joy of the life of tsuva is opened for him. Tsuva raises the person higher and higher through its stages of bitterness, pleasantness, grieving, and joy. Nothing purges and purifies a person, and raises him to the stature of being truly a man, like the profound process of tsuva”

Today, we are in the belly of the beast. There is temptation all around us. We aren’t equipped to deal with it. None of us grew up insulated from the vices of the outside world. Many of us weren’t raised in Torah. Some took on these laws later on in life, after we were trained to realize that it is socially acceptable -- even respectable, to commit virtually every form of sexual immorality. We live in a time and a place where we are beset by every temptation imaginable. As a nation, we are as weak as we can possibly be to fight it.

This gives us the greatest opportunity there is.

The task for our generation is to dive into the darkness and redeem the final sparks of light. We are all in an ideal place to do this.

Hashem helps us at every step when we do tsuva. He doesn’t make it too easy of too difficult to take on this mitzvah. For the first year of doing the tsuva of shmirat habrit, Hashem blessed me with a job on Long Island. I wasn’t surrounded by women at work, there were no subway rides with improper things to look at, and because I was married and commuting by car, there were no bars by the corner to stop off at on the way home. It was the ideal location to start my new spiritual journey.

After a year of doing tsuva for a greater standard of sexual morality, I noticed that the capacity of my neshama grew exponentially. Read Rabbi Tzvi Fishman’s book, Secret of the Brit -- I promise you, you will understand what I am talking about. Your soul gets stronger, your energy levels rise. One of the ways your neshama strengthens, is it gets a lot more sensitive. You are able to perceive a lot of things that are going on around you that you were never able to perceive before. You can go to the exact same place, a home, a field, or a city, that you were in, say, a year ago, and feel as if you are in an entirely different place. It felt like I was passing the tests Hashem challenged me with.

Then, Hashem decided it was time for a bigger test. I was fired from my job in the suburbs. I took a job at a Wall Street firm, located in Lower Manhattan.

It wasn’t long before I was faced with a new set of challenges. Every time I went on the subway, I noticed that every woman dressed very revealing. It was so much easier to avoid a woman’s glance when I was on Long Island. On the E line, I have to bury my head in my briefcase just to avoid glances. I must have never noticed this before. When I walk on the blocks to the office building, every other person was a beautiful woman that I want to look at or make eye contact with. I had to look at the tip of my nose, or gaze at the sky just to avoid what was in my peripheral vision. That was the least of it. At every moment, I felt this collective level of impurity. It’s very intense and it is very disgusting. Even after I was able to stop staring at women, the satan found another way to attack me.

I had stopped staring at women. I had stopped flirting with them. Even necessary conversation I had with females in the office was conducted with emotional distance. I was polite, but not too chatty. After all this, there was a part of me that was still losing badly. For whatever reason, my sexual mental images were becoming more creative and intense. It was revolting. Half of my mind would engage in them, and the other half would beg Hashem for forgiveness for thinking them. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t resist. I began to study more, pray harder, and to fix my daily routine so Hashem would help me get rid of them.

This is one of the trials we all have to face, probably more than once, as we do constant Tikkunim on ourselves.

I finally beat them. Well, at least I got rid of them plaguing me all the time. But all it took was one physical image and all the impulses I defeated came back in an instant.

The amazing thing about being Shmirat Habrit is you become a little detached from the whole “male-female” tension. This may be unique to New York, or it may be a phenomenon that exists in every major city. From the time I was single in New York there has been a sub-conscious instinct that I could have any woman I want. No, I don’t think I am Don Juan. But there is this ongoing sense that on average, if I approached a girl and “put in the effort,” I could get what I wanted. Could this be the source of the constant feeling of impurity?

I will never cheat on my wife. I will never cheat on Hashem. In being able to merely imagine the prospect of physical conquest, it presents a big temptation. Overpowering a woman’s inhibitions part of the charm of sex. You can, consciously or not, desire to overcome a woman’s sensibilities without touching her, talking to her, or even making eye contact. Just the feeling that many of these women can be “overcome” brings on this feeling of impurity. This desire, which I have been working very hard to overcome, is a sin of sexual misconduct. The level of impurity is so strong in Manhattan. It’s a bigger challenge than I have ever had to face. I can only imagine how much harder it is for people who live here all the time and have to battle this impurity at every moment. When you are not giving 150% of yourselves to fight it you can be easily overwhelmed by the Satan. You can quickly be controlled and directed by it.

It means that somewhere in the bitter darkness of Sin City, exist the great sparks of light. I know why Hashem has sent us here. I know what our mission is. Our test is to rectify the sins committed in the past. The RamBam, in the Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tsuva reveals that one of the biggest tsuvot a man can do is be faced with the same situation he was in before when he sinned. If this time, he overcomes the temptation that originally got the best of him, he has performed a very powerful tsuva. Tomorrow, I, we, will be tempted with 100 women dressed to kill. We will be confronted with a general attitude that when it comes to flirtation, touching, and sex, there are little or no boundaries. We will be confronted with billboards, people in the street, female workmates, all who want us to check them out, lock eyes with, or even, Hashem forbid, ask out for a cup of coffee, you know, as friends.

Hashem has given us the ultimate opportunity. While riding on the subway, I can look around for something to see, or I can close my eyes and listen to a lecture on my iPod. I can be flirtatious with the women I work with, or I can keep a courteous distance. At every moment, I can indulge in the signs on the street, or I can avert my eyes and affect the heavens. Hashem sets before us two paths. On one path is the option to choose life. The other is to choose death. At every moment we can release the greatest sparks of Divine light into the world from the deepest recesses of the darkness, or we can remain mired in it, blind and weak.

Redemption and Salvation aren’t just taking place in Yeshivot. It’s happening everywhere. It’s all happening right now. HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us the power to save the Jewish People. He blessed us with the ability to Redeem the world. We have it within ourselves to be so much closer with Hashem, and feel the highest levels of inner joy.

We can do this by standing up to the evils of this world and by taking on the hardest mitzvah there is. We will confront Edom and win by facing their spiritual impurities at their strongest, all the while holding true to our Jewish spirit. We can prove to our Loving Judge and Father in Heaven that the Jewish People can overcome the full attack upon it by the forces of Amalek so Hashem, in His love and compassion for His children, will bless us with the miracles we will need to defeat the physical forces of these nations on earth that are trying to destroy us.

The entire world is on the brink, and every action you do makes a difference. The RamBam, in the Mishneh Torah, laws of Tsuva (3:4) sums it up perfectly.

Throughout the entire year, a person should always look at himself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin. If he performs one sin, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and brings destruction upon himself. On the other hand, if he performs one mitzvah, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of merit and brings deliverance and salvation to himself and others. This is implied by the verse in Proverbs (10:25) “A righteous man is the foundation of the world.” i.e., he who acted righteously, tipped the balance of the entire world to merit and saved it.

May we all be Blessed with the strength to perform the mitzvah of Shmirat Habrit, and merit to feel the joys of true happiness.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s weekly market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a statistical review of the important economic indicators. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, it's time to tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!

2008-10-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

Part 23 - The Commandment Not to Regret

A Jewish man and a Jewish woman who conduct their marital relations in holiness influence the highest celestial channels and cause Divine blessings to flow to all of the worlds. Marital fidelity, focusing on the beauty of ones wife during relations, and making sure to be Shmirat HaBrit for ones wife, as well as for Hashem, benefits your family and the entire universe.

You enable blessings to enter this world from and to the other worlds. Isn’t it amazing that we can have such a positive impact on so many realities by making the good choices right here? If any of us needed an extra reason to get married, stay married, or find even more joy in the union of marriage – the ability to make a positive impact on the entire Universe is a great reason.

One who guards the Brit, it is impossible for him to fall into the desire of money. Earning a living without effort is the concept of “bread, or manna, from heaven” it is possible to receive this through a general rectification which is Tikun HaBrit. Guarding the Brit protects us against the desires for materialism.

From the Jewish mindset, work is NOT our main purpose in life. Our careers are a necessity, not a reward. They keep us from our families. They distance us from focusing on Hashem.

Why do we work?

We work to provide the essentials for the survival of our families.

When did this start?

Having to work is a consequence that resulted from Adam, the first man, eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In the Book of Genesis, Hashem tells Adam that from then on, “by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread.”

We must remember that having to take 8 hours of your day from Torah, family, and prayer is a curse. Parnussa is important. But a curse is something we want to minimize, not expand.

We work to live – not live to work.

Guarding the Brit enables us to uncover the true wealth in this world. The pursuit of money, while necessary, is put back into its proper context.

This is how powerful this mitzvah is. Desire, like sex, and everything in this world, can be used for good and it can be used for bad. It can be used for Kedusha, and it can be used for impurities. It all depends on the choices we make. It all depends on how we ‘repair’ our souls, our minds, and our hearts to point our most powerful desires in the right direction. Money can be pursued to attain power, or it can be pursued for the sake of charity. Sex can be for the sake of procreation and the sanctity of marriage, or it can be for impurity. Today, we have created a world in where the two greatest desires are money and sex. What if this wasn’t true? What if we were to do such a repair on our souls that we only felt the true realities of the day, and realized that the rewards our society created were merely illusions? What if the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit infuses you with so much Divine energy, that you perceive with your feelings, your mind, and your heart a closeness to Hashem which becomes your greatest “possession.” Taking on this mitzvah makes you feel so much better, so much happier, and so much more ALIVE, you internalize that connecting your being to Hashem truly is greater than any physical joy. Closeness to Him, as challenging as it may be, is greater than money.

If you struggle to love your G-d with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, you will repair your soul on such a deep level, you will begin to change the basic assumptions with which you live your daily life. You will be in a state where money provides you with the basic needs for life. You can use that life to pursue Hashem.

Don’t be afraid.

There may be those who say, “I like my career. Why should I be ashamed of working hard? I like making money. The Talmud states that a poor man is like a dead man so why should I give up who I am?” Others may say, “I want to make a difference in the world. I want the world to know that I existed. You need money to make the world a better place. Who are you to tell me how to make an impact on things?”

Both of these arguments are very valid. It is important to remember that to connect with Hashem on a very deep level doesn’t always mean changing your life. It means changing your OUTLOOK ON LIFE. If I work 12 hours a day as a lawyer, I can do it for a variety of reasons. I can do it to make senior partner by age 40, or I can do it so I don’t have to work on weekends and I can dedicate this time to my family. You can generate a six figure salary for a house in the Hamptons and a sports car, or you can give Tzedaka generously. You can work hard to make sure that corporation X, which employs 40,000 people, is insulated from frivolous lawsuits that could bankrupt it, or, you can take great effort to hold a very important important and difficult mitzvah: have faith that all our money comes directly from Hashem and whatever the cost, be scrupulously honest in all your business dealings.

Or you can do both options!

At this point, you have BROKEN THE CHAINS OF THE DESIRE FOR MONEY, POWER, and WORLDLY PURSUITS which run counter to basic Jewish values. This isn’t impossible. There is no guarantee in life that you will become rich. There is also no guarantee that if you become rich, you will attain the happiness that we imagine goes with being wealthy.

The wealthiest men on the planet are great examples to prove the illusion of the relationship between happiness and money.

When Bill Gates was in Israel, he was asked on national TV a very poignant question. He was asked, “Does having money make you happy?”

The richest man in the world answered back, “absolutely not. That is why I am leaving everything I have to charity.”

Warren Buffett’s story is no different. His net value is over $30 billion. He owns scores of companies, and has partial ownership of some of the biggest corporations in the world. Did he try to buy happiness? Instead of moving to Hong Kong, Paris, or New York, Mr. Buffett resides in the town where he grew up: Omaha, Nebraska. Instead of the Upper East Side penthouse, Mr. Buffett lives in the same house he bought for $31,000 in 1958. His workday is over by 8PM.

Take a look around you. There are plenty of wealthy people who are NOT happy. Those that are, generally don’t derive their happiness from their money. What I can guarantee is that if you pursue Hashem through the path of Shmirat Habrit, you will feel a wealth greater than anything money can buy. This wealth, unlike the other kind of assets, follows you into the next world.

This mitzvah is so powerful, it guards a person from the ayin hara, or the evil eye. Who was the first man to perform the mitzvah of Brit Milah? Avraham. Avraham had a child when he was 100 years old. All his life, the astrologers of the nations told him that he would never have a child. Once Avraham performed the mitzvah of the Brit, he was told by Hashem’s messengers, the angles, that he would have a son. We learn from this that while the laws of astrology and fortunes can be powerful when it comes to the nations of the world, they are powerless against Israel. We don’t believe in luck. We don’t believe in the stars. There is a specific reason why horoscopes are NOT printed in the Jerusalem Post. We don’t believe in reading anything to tell ones fortune. Even if these things can be done, they CANNOT be done to us. When we hold to our mitzvoth, and cling to Hashem, the ayin hara, or any of the spiritual weapons the goyim use against us, are powerless.

The most powerful part of the human is the mind. It is where ideas come from. It is where we separate ourselves from the animals. All of our accomplishments, all of our day to day activities, all of our actions emanate from the mind. At every moment, we have the option to use our minds for good, or to waste them. With each decision, we directly affect the health and capacity of our mental abilities.

Rabbi Nachman states the main rectification of the mind is by breaking the desires for sexual thought. The mind is like a burning candle, it feeds off the fluids of the body. These fluids travel to the brain becoming the fatty substance that feeds the brain. The main power of the mind comes from these fatty fluids. When a person breaks the desire for sexual fantasies, and stops excreting seminal fluids from the body, then these fluids travel up to the brain, giving the brain more energy and sustenance, enabling an individual to realize more of his minds power and abilities.

The more and more time I am Shmirat HaBrit, the clearer I can think. Over the years, I am able to grasp concepts on a deeper level than I ever have in the past. I remember more, my mind is faster – I recall information, solve problems, and bring together different pieces of a puzzle from my memory more efficiently. Our minds operate like a computer. Taking on the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit is a little like getting a massive upgrade to all systems. You are installing a larger drive that expands your memory storage, and a better microprocessor which makes your “machine” perform more tasks much quicker. This benefits us in everything that we do. Especially in learning Torah.

Rabbi Nachman goes on to say that in achieving a level of shmirat habrit, one merits to receive a double portion of energy from Above. Along with installing better drive and new microprocessors to our systems, we are operating with stronger batteries.

When one is shomer habrit, he receives the ability to pray. There is a story of a Rabbi who would pray for hours and hours in his Shul. Each morning, his minyan would pray with him, and start learning as the Rabbi prayed. One day, the congregants got a little tired. They decided to go home and have a snack. They left knowing that when they got back, their Rabbi would still be davening. They had their midday nosh, but when they returned to Shul. Their Rabbi was nowhere in sight. When they found him, they asked him why he finished his prayers so much earlier than usual. He told them a parable. He told them a story about how once there was a tree. On top of the tree was a panoramic view of the most beautiful sights on the horizon. The only way to get up the tree was for 10 men to stand on top of each other and to hoist one individual on top. That one individual could see the greatest sights imaginable. Once one person walked away, the man on top could no longer see the horizon and all of the wonders it displayed. The Rabbi explained that he was able to pray to Hashem with such fervor and joy because he was praying with such righteous men. Once they left, he couldn’t spiritually stand on top of them and get even closer to Hashem and feel His radiance. The foundation of his prayers started with his minyan. The same can be said for Shmirat Habrit. This mitzvah is the foundation of all other mitzvahs. When you hold to this mitzvah and pray, you are literally standing on the shoulders of a giant. You are much closer to Hashem. Your prayers are filled with more love, energy, intensity. Morning prayers will be less an exercize in reading the words and completing the chore. It will truly become an uplifting experience. In the short time you spend davening, you are filling up your spiritual tank with the energy you need to make the day spectacular. Try it and you will see for yourself.

There is nothing that causes depression more than pgam habrit. This mitzvah very quickly sucks the energy out of you. Imagine how it must have felt for the Rabbi to be on top of the human pile, to see the sights in Heaven, and immediately fall down. Once you go from being shmirat habrit to pgam habrit, your mind loses a lot of its strength. You can’t connect to Hashem like you did before. You lose your energy. You wake up the next morning and feel like half of your being has been amputated. Your whole neshama can perceive the lower level of consciousness you have fallen to. Like any failure or setback in life, you begin to despair. You feel down. If you commit sexual sins frequently, this type of sadness can be constant. It can happen so many times, it feels like an ongoing, or natural feeling. Lethargy, sadness, even depression become an accepted part of one’s daily life.

It is important to realize that this simply isn’t true. Sadness is temporary. It comes from the mind, which originated from the spirit. At any given moment, you can turn things around. You can find out how to leap two or three levels spiritually, and NOT FALL DOWN.

It is such an exciting challenge! Not easy mind you, but very exciting in knowing that Hashem gives us the opportunity to get up off the map and bring so much good in this world, even if you fall down 100 times! You can destroy the power of the yetzer hara, and the power of the satan himself by overcoming the temptation to sulk. Whenever you are sitting alone and you get the urge for self-pity, don’t think of it as a simple decision of buying a pint of chocolate ice cream or not. You are mired in a cosmic struggle between the forces of good, represented by your ability to bounce back, and the forces of evil, represented by the satan and his attempt to pull you further into the pit.

Now is the time to jump! Go for a walk. Call a friend. Listen to a Torah lecture on your MP3. Take a drive somewhere. Read a book at a diner or coffee house. You can smite the Satan, win a cosmic battle for the forces of light, and feel a lot better in an instant!

You are scoring big points in heaven not just for yourself, but for the fate of all of Israel. At every moment, Hashem gives you the opportunity to break through the bounds of your own sadness. It is such a blessing from heaven that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave so many chances to change the world. We all want to make existence better for everyone. Here is our opportunity! You don’t need money, you don’t need contacts, and you don’t need a grassroots database of potential donors. The physical world is a mere shadow of the spiritual world. Wherever we bring light from Above, we elevate everything around us! In deciding not to be sad today, you bring a spark of happiness to the entire universe.

The Zohar teaches that whoever safeguards the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit, will not suffer gehonim for his sins. At the end of one’s life, our mitzvoth are judged against our sins.

Hashem wants us to rise to the highest level of Gan Eden (Paradise) possible. When we are judged, we are “sentenced” to up to 11 months in hell to pay for our sins. Once the time gehenom is complete, we have served our punishment and our sins have been “paid for.”

Our mitzvoth are then judged against NOTHING! Then we go to our place in Paradise. While we all must pay for all of our misdeeds in the next world, how long we spend paying for our transgressions is up to us. How horrible the place we serve our sins is also up to us. We are judged for everything that we do in life. Listen to the near-death experience lectures by Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi and you will be stunned.

What goes around comes around. Don’t believe your eyes when you see people getting away with so many terrible crimes. They ones that don’t suffer are in much more trouble than the ones who go to jail. At least the ones that receive some sort of retribution in this world are spared a little in the next world. In the next world, the simplest joys are far greater than anything we can experience here. The worst horrors are terrifying compared to what we naively call misery in this one. Once our spiritual eyes are opened to this, we will all realize that nobody gets away with it so always do the right thing!

Don’t envy the crooked mortgage bankers, the biased journalists, and the corrupt politicians of the world who commit treacheries against honest men and walk away scot free. The CEO’s get their 8 figure bonuses while thousands of poor families no longer have a place to live. We may think we aspire to be like them now, but you will not want to answer for the things they did in this world to exchange the momentary and fleeting feeling of being on top for a moment in return for an eternity of lying at the bottom.

In Pirkei Avot, 4:21, Rabbi Yaakov states, “The world is like a corridor before the World to Come. Prepare yourself in the corridor so that you may enter the banquet hall.” Hashem Willing, if we “prepare ourselves” today we will merit to enter the banquet hall. This isn’t a wives tale. This is JEWISH REALITY. This is one of the basic principles of our faith.

According to Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in his book, The Path of the Just, this world is for us to gain merit for the next one. The people who have the most in this world, can easily wind up with the least in the next one. King David was acutely aware of this. He had power, he had money, and he had everything he ever wanted. Instead of championing his greatness, he lived in great fear. He was such a righteous Jew that he feared all of the affluence he had in this world would reduce his share in the World to Come. This life is temporary. What we prepare for in this life is a state of being that is infinite and eternal.

Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi tells a story of a man who has $200 million. This man is told that he will receive a mansion in 85 years. When he gets it, he can stay in it forever. Right now, he lives in a studio apartment. If he spends money to make his studio nicer, he cannot use any of the money towards his mansion. If he enjoys his studio and doesn’t touch his money, he can spend it on the mansion in 85 years.

What does he do? Does he try to make his studio apartment like a little palace, or does he find contentment with his tiny apartment, knowing that very soon he will be living in a mansion which he can furnish with the best of everything and live in it forever? This is what it means to struggle in this life, the limited life. We exist in the studio apartment so we can build the merit to live in Olam HaBa. If you do mitzvoth in this world, the best things in the universe are waiting for you. If you don’t do mitzvoth today, you will regret it. Judgment day will feel like sitting in a classroom where the teacher expects everybody to hand in their book reports. This report counts for 80% of your grade. Everybody has their report but you. You didn’t make yours. You are not prepared. This is what happens if we don’t take advantage of the time Hashem gave us to serve Him with our free will while we still have it.

Rabbi Yitzchak Shashoua of Ohr Sameach tells another story to prove the point. It is about a woman. She wasn’t observant. She has a son who is very young. One day, she gets very sick. She is taken to the hospital where her vital signs suddenly stop functioning. She is clinically dead. A couple of minutes later, she wakes up. Her sickness is completely gone and later on that day, she goes home. While she was clinically dead, her soul went up to heaven to be judged. In the Heavenly courtroom, she stood before several holy men. She told them that she had to live. She needed to take care of her son. She begged and begged, and the judges allowed her to go back to this world. Her soul returned to her body and she woke up. Grateful to Hashem for this second chance, she immediately did tsuva. She took on the Laws of the Mitzvot and she made sure that her son was brought up as an observant Jew. Her Rabbi was amazed at her story. He asked her about what she saw while her soul was in the next world. She said that the mitzvoth are so important. The people on earth who have it the best – like rock stars, and CEOs, but who didn’t do enough tsuva or didn’t live good enough lives, they had the worst places. In the next world, they were like beggars. There was so much happiness to be had in that world, and they couldn’t enjoy it. She said that the people who had to struggle in this world, the Rabbis, the Torah scholars, observant Jews, the sick, righteous gentiles, the poor, had the best places in Olam Haba. The judges in the next world were the sages in this one. This was a near death experience by a lady who wasn’t religious at the time – this underscores that these realities don’t just come from the Rabbis who know the Torah very well, they come from the basic senses of people who knew nothing about Judaism. A couple of months later, this woman went to a family for Shabbat. The family had pictures of great sages of the Jewish People. When the lady looked at these pictures, she screamed and passed out. When the head of the family revived her, he asked her if she was okay. She began to tell the family the story I just told you. When she saw one of the great Jewish Sages, she told them that he was one of the judges she stood before when her soul was in Heaven for those few minutes.

What goes around, truly comes around. You reap what you sow, and nobody gets away with anything. There are consequences for every thought, intention, and action that we do. Everything is written down, and we have to answer for all of it. Just because there are no immediate consequences for the things we do in this world doesn’t mean that there never will be. The RamBam states thirteen fundamental principles of the Jewish faith. Number ten is: I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, knows all the deeds of each individual, and all of their thoughts. The next principle states: I believe, with complete faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, rewards with good those who observe His commandments, and punishes those who violate His commandments.

Hashem knows everything. There is no deed in this world, sexual or otherwise, where we can say to ourselves, ‘hey, nobody’s watching!’ Even if you get away with whatever it is you, you will have to account for it. The Zohar states that if we hold to the mitzvah of sexual morality, even if we have to pay dearly for the things we have done in this world, it won’t be in the pits of gehonim. As much as we may have to pay for our misdeeds, and as agonizing as they may be, it won’t be as bad as long as we hold to this specific mitzvah. No matter how harsh the judgment that hangs over us, the decree isn’t sealed. Every day we wake up is a gift from Hashem. It is a chance for us through our thoughts, deeds, and emotions to do tsuva for the wrongs we have done so we can shorten our sentence. It is a Divine opportunity to better our place in the world that really counts. We all need to realize that the greatest kindness Hashem gave us is the ability to serve Him with free will for every day He gives it to us. We can get closer and closer to our Creator in all worlds, throughout all times by what we do right here, and right now – at every moment.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s daily market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a weekly review of the major articles published around the world. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, and tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!

2008-10-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

Part 22 – Aliyah to a Higher State

In the Ethics of the Fathers (4:1), it states that a man who can control his passions is greater than the conqueror of a city. Yosef HaTzaddik was able to control his passions even though he had to contend with living in the red light district nation of Egypt, and not the Holy environs of his family in Eretz Israel. He had to overcome the urges of a teenage boy, and encouragement of a society that valued physical pleasure above all else, and on top of all this, he had to resist the advances of one of the most physically desirable women in Egypt. Under these circumstances, to resist Brittney Spears once is hard enough. Joseph had to do it time, and time, and time, and time again. The Midrash tells us that Potiphar’s wife changed her clothes three times a day to entice Joseph to sleep with her. She did this for a year. That means that Joseph was seduced one thousand times and resisted every one of them. He was eventually rewarded for his efforts with dominion over the whole world.

Imagine Christina Aguilera, Brittney Spears, and Beyonce all hitting on you while you are 18 years old. Could you say no even once? This is what Joseph resisted. This is why he was given the title Joseph HaTzaddik, and mastery over the world.

Was he really given dominion over the whole world?

Yes.

In Sefer Bereshit (the Book of Genesis), we see Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers. He is carted off to Egypt and becomes slave to Potiphar, an officer to Pharaoh. This is where Joseph is tempted by Potiphar’s wife. After refusing her advances for the thousandth time, she falsely accuses him of trying to rape her and is thrown into a dungeon. It is here where he accurately interprets the dreams of the Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker. The baker is hanged, and the cupbearer is restored to his post. At this time, Egypt is the superpower of the world. Whoever rules Egypt has a dominion that stretches everywhere. Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, has a dream that nobody can interpret. Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream successfully and is appointed the political leader of Egypt.

When Joseph interpreted the dreams of pharaoh, he said that there will be 7 years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. Joseph, pharaoh, and the royal cabinet were the only ones in the know about this. If the world knew why didn’t every nation stockpile wheat over the seven years of plenty like the Egyptian’s did? When the times of plenty ended, only Pharaoh was ready. All of the citizens of Egypt had nothing to eat. They eventually sold their livestock, their land, and even themselves to Yosef and Pharaoh’s kingdom in order to buy the food that Egypt had saved. Citizens from all over flocked to Yosef to buy food. In the end, the nations of the world subjected themselves to Egypt’s rule in order to survive. The pharaoh became the leader of the entire world. Yosef was the power over his entire kingdom. When pharaoh died, Yosef took over as ruler of Egypt and reigned for 40 years.

For 80 years, Yosef was ruler of the world. This is the power of guarding the Brit. This is what we are capable of when we control our sexual desires like our forefather Yosef.

Many great things happened because of Yosef’s diligence. The Zohar says that when we left Egypt, the sea split in the merit of Yosef guarding the mitzvah of the Brit. As I mentioned earlier, one of Yosef’s descendants, Joshua Ben Nun, was the first Jew to conquer the Land of Israel. When he first entered the Land, the sea split again! Boaz, the righteous Judge of Israel, sheltered Ruth the Moabite in her time of need. As she slept at his feet, he did not try to have relations with her. In the merit of Boaz’s safeguarding the Brit, his family line was blessed. His great grandson King David, and his great great grandson, King Solomon ruled the world for 80 years as well. Boaz will, Hashem Willing, soon be a father to another great king, who we will call Melech HaMoshiach.

In honor of safeguarding this mitzvah, once again, we will have influence over the world for Holiness and good. Our generation is faced with 1,000 temptations a year as well. With the way many women dress, the internet, TV, movies, and loose advertising – we are faced with 1,000 temptations a day! If we can draw down the strength of Joseph our father and resist the urge to look the same way he did, we will merit to rule the world also. The Zohar states that Moshiach will come in the merit of those who guard the Brit. In the times of Moshiach, the Jewish government in Israel will rule the world. The nations will come to us for spiritual guidance the same way their ancestors came to Yosef HaTzaddik for physical sustenance thousands of years ago.

Is Pirkei Avot telling us something deeper when it says that a conqueror of one’s passions is greater than the conqueror of a city?

What will happen when we begin to do tsuva for our sexual sins? New York is probably one of the most licentious places on earth. It is most likely one of the most licentious places in history. Yosef and Boaz had to deal with so many temptations, but did they have to deal with the internet? Did they have to deal with on-demand television? What about a printing press, and magazines and as on buses and in the subway? Did our forefathers have to deal with as much temptation and adversity to Holiness as we do today? Hashem measures effort, not necessarily results. Noach, who was a decent man, is often compared to Avraham, who introduced G-d’s word to the world and became the first Patriarch of the Jewish people. Our sages state that because the generation of the flood was so horrible, to merely is a decent person was equivalent to being a tzaddik during Avraham’s generation. Implicit is the assumption that in order for Noach to be a decent man in his generation, he had to put in as much effort as Avraham did to be a great man in his. Spiritually, according to the effort lies the reward! That is why the power of tsuva in our day is immense! If we were to guard appropriate levels of sexual morality in the face of everything we see around us, what great men in our history will we be compared to? Against what great deeds will our generation be measured?

Based on my personal experience, this is how I understand what the Torah is saying when it says that the mitzvah of the Brit is tantamount to holding the whole Torah. Some mitzvoth are what I call STATE mitzva. An action mitzvoth, like saying a bracha over food, or praying, or lighting Shabbat candles, has a specific period of time attached to it. You perform these mitzvoth, and then you are done. A STATE mitzvoth is where you are never done with the mitzvah. You are always performing it. Shabbat is both an action mitzvah, and a state mitzvah. It is the best example of the concept I am trying to explain. Shabbat is a mitzvah that lasts for a day. It is an action mitzvah in that it has a start time, and a completion time. You begin it, and you end it. However, during those 25 magical hours, your whole state of being is in compliance with that mitzvah every second you guard it. All throughout Shabbat, because you are guarding the commandment, your soul is in a higher state of being. You can feel it very intensely. The more you guard this mitzvah, for example, deciding to spend an hour or two on Friday night learning instead of sleeping extra hours the higher state of spirituality your soul is in. The more you comply, the more your spirit rises while you are in this state. However, the state for Shabbat is limited. After havdalah, the Chag is over and you are no longer observing the mitzvah. Your soul cannot go to a higher state anymore through this mitzvah until the next Shabbat.

Are there any other mitzvoth where we can enjoy a higher state for a longer period of time?

Sukkot is 8 days. Pesach is 8 days. We reach a higher state of being during Pesach by refraining from leavened foods. Yom Kippur is the ultimate island in time. We reach the highest state by refraining from food and in spending the day in prayer.

How about a longer state of spiritual elevation? Are there any other mitzvoth that can bring our souls higher for an even longer period of time?

How about keeping kosher? This mitzvah is one that we must observe every minute of every day. This is one of the purest examples of a state mitzvah. The more serious we are of this mitzvah, the higher our souls rise. If you keep Kosher at home, and refuse to eat meat when you go out, you are guarding this mitzvah to an extent. Every moment you are in compliance with these standards, your soul rises to a higher state. If you keep kosher at home and only eat at kosher restaurants, you are guarding this mitzvah to an even greater extent. Your soul rises to an even higher state. Every moment of your life, your neshama is elevated and every mitzvah you perform is invested with more spiritual energy.

Are there other ‘STATE’ mitzvot that you need to perform at every moment?

The mitzvah of Lashon Harah is another good example. We speak all the time, and guarding the laws of not gossiping is something we have to do at every moment. Keeping this mitzvah is exceedingly difficult, and holding it takes a mammoth amount of effort. This is a mitzvah where we can achieve an even higher level of spiritual elevation if we exerted ourselves enough to keep it.

Is there a state mitzvah, where I keep it every moment of every day, and the spiritual reward I receive is so intense that it will feel as if I guarded the whole Torah? That’s the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit. This mitzvah is so difficult, yet so powerful, you will feel like you are guarding the whole Torah.

If you aren’t circumcised, of what strength are the mitzvoth? If you haven’t accepted the covenant of Hashem, to what extent are you performing the other mitzvoth? You are following the Torah without actually accepting it upon yourself. The same applies here. Shmirat HaBrit is THE mitzvah of circumcision. This is the foundation mitzvah. You can build spiritual skyscrapers on it. Without it, everything else will fall and collapse. In a state of Shmirat Habrit, every mitzvah you do will have added value. Every prayer you recite will be with extra strength. Not only is the mitzvah of sexual morality like holding the entire Torah, it enables you to perform every single mitzvah with such great alacrity. It ignites your neshama. You will experience each mitzvah with so much more energy, joy, and understanding. You are better equipped to perceive the spirituality Hashem invests in everything around you. You see the world with the awe and wonder of a child.

In Taharat HaKodesh it says that, in this generation all those who try their hardest to be Shomer HaBrit are the ones doing the final work – they are separating the final sparks of light from the greatest levels of darkness that will bring rise to Moshiach. Sources from all over the Torah are saying the same thing to us – this is our moment. We have a very unique opportunity to transform ourselves from one of the worst generations in Jewish history to one of the best.

We may have been given the hardest test the Jewish People have ever had to face. Today, temptations have never been greater, and the Jewish People have never been weaker. It is estimated that 1 out of every 4 pages on the internet is pornography. It is also estimated that less than 1 out of every 4 Jews is aware of his own faith. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef laments that 80% of the Jewish Nation does not recite the Shema before they go to bed.

The forces of evil we have to fight have never been stronger. We have to overcome the temptation of sex, drugs, obsession with money, and a world that tells you that what’s good is bad, and what’s bad is good. We are mired in one of the darkest eras of history. An era where we don’t even have the basic tools to correct ourselves. The Satan is holding all of the cards.

What are we to do?

We should see the times we live in for what they are – a test from Hashem. If the Jewish people can do tsuva when they are in Yeshiva, it’s wonderful. If they can live as honorable people when society views honor as standard that’s great. What happens when the entire world is living in darkness? What happens when living as a Jew is ridiculed at every turn? What happens when even the Jewish People themselves see anything Jewish as something foreign? What can a Jew do to connect with Hashem? How far will a Jew go to stand up for what is right? What happens when a Jew is surrounded and immersed with so much sex, porn, and lewd graphics, that he becomes completely obsessed with women? What happens when a Jew can no longer trust his own instincts?

Can he possibly combat all of this and serve Hashem with a clear heart, and a clean mind?

The only era we can reasonably compare ourselves to is the generation of Noach. When Noach lived, there was no social or moral order. People did what they wanted, and their sexual sins were as deviant as they were abominable. Throughout Noah’s generation nobody did anything to improve themselves. Hashem commanded that Noach build the Ark by hand as an act of compassion towards mankind. It took Noach 120 years to build the Ark. Over that time, if the people did tsuva, the Decree from Hashem to blot out humanity would have been lifted. Today, the decree is upon us. Iran is putting the finishing touches on a nuclear weapon. Al-Qaeda is plotting to unleash any number of deadly viruses on global population centers. The possible doomsday scenarios of Armageddon and World War III, Hashem forbid, are inescapable.

Yet we still have the opportunity to do tsuva right now.

The law of prophecy is clear. All positive prophecies will definitely happen. Every negative prophecy is merely a warning if we act to stop it. If we do tsuva, every prophecy that predicts disaster will not happen! To save the world, we must fight this great spiritual battle. We have to stand up to the multitude of demons that surround us. We can struggle with all of our heart and all of our strength and reverse the Divine Decree of what awaits us if we remain complacent.

I used to think that this was impossible. I lived in the sheer darkness of sexual obsession for years and when the time came to clean up myself, I didn’t think I could do it. It happened anyway. I spent years doing tikkunim. I fought thousands of battles, and many I am still fighting. While the job is not done, I know that I have overcome many major obstacles. I can handle the constant temptation. I have come to the point to where I can say – “This isn’t impossible. I can do it.”

I am not stronger than any of you. If I can do this, you can do this.

The greatest job in the history of the world has been given to us. We have the chance to be the last link in the chain of Jewish history. We can end the suffering of our forefathers. We can prevent the suffering of our children. We can redeem the pain of this world. Hashem blessed us with the chance to bring on a day without sickness, poverty, hunger, or war.

It’s in our hands. As weak as we are, and as powerful as the enemy is – we can all do the impossible, and ignite a miracle with our holy sparks. The Holy sparks we can find are brighter and more powerful than any others because they have been hidden here – in the times of the greatest darkness.

What happens when we win? What will the Satan have to say to Hashem? after they were given all of the weapons of victory, and still, they couldn’t beat us? The Satan will have no choice but to concede to Hashem that he will never beat us! Hashem will see His people overcome every possible adversity. In His Compassion, He can decide that there is nothing left to test Israel with and it is time for His promised Redemption. Moshiach can come and do what has been promised us for thousands of years. He will kill the Satan. All evil in the world will be destroyed. Every impediment mankind has tripped over in pursuit of a better world will be removed once and for all.

We can do this!

We can bring Moshiach now and reap Heavenly rewards right here on earth. We can do this not just for ourselves, but for everyone we love. Not just for our friends and family, but for all our brothers and sisters. Not just for our generation, but for our fellow Jews of years gone by. Not just for the Jewish People, but for all the good people Hashem created in His world.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s daily market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a weekly review of the major articles published around the world. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, and tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!

2008-10-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Part 21 – Tishmor Torah, Yishmor Medina! (If you guard the Torah, He will guard the nation!)

The RamBam states, “It is forbidden for a man to bring himself to think about forbidden sexual matters. If a sexual thought enters his mind, he should turn his heart away from lewd and polluting matters and focus on matters of Torah which abound with love and charm.”, Rabbi Yose states, “When a man perceives that evil thoughts are assailing him, he should study the Torah and that will drive them away.”

A man who regularly experiences nocturnal emissions, should be extra careful not to look at women. He should recite the Bedtime Shema with special intention. For those of us who don't understand Hebrew with the speed with which we pray, we can go to artscroll.com and pick up an interlinear version of the Bedtime Shema.

A big defense is fences. You need to separate yourself from this sin by a wide distance. When you find yourself engaging in behavior that isn’t sexual in nature, but lies on the periphery, you need to stop. Such actions include thinking about sex, flirting with someone you are not serious about, or going to a club or a bar late at night.

Working to improve yourself on the conscious level will have many benefits that spillover onto all areas of your existence.

When you begin to have a sexual dream, sometimes you will be saved, and you will wake up just before you have an emission. Demons, which initially appear in dreams as women, will get you excited. In the merit of a mitzvah you will be saved. Don’t underestimate the power of a single mitzvah. You never know where it will save you.

I was very fortunate. The first day I learned about Shmirat Habrit, it was the morning before Rosh Hashanah. That night, the night of the Day of Judgment, I had a sex dream. Right about when I was about to have a nocturnal emission, the image of all the papers I downloaded that morning with the information about this mitzvah appeared, and the excitement of salvation brought me to consciousness. I was saved from a big sin. A nocturnal emission on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur is a sign that you will have a bad year. This one act saved me for the whole year. It is important to place aside some money to give to Tzedaka the next day if you are saved from this.

Moshiach will come in the merit of those who are Shmirat HaBrit! The Zohar intimates that the final Redemption will only come about through Tikkun HaBrit. This means that every one of us can play an integral role in the Redemption of the Jewish People and the Eternal Security of Israel by what they do right here, right now, B’Ezrat Hashem. Simply put: TISHMOR TORAH, TISMOR MEDINA.

The difficult part about sleep is the loss of control. You can’t control yourself while you are asleep. This is the danger of the time you relinquish control of your senses to slumber. It is important to control what you do while you are awake so your mitzvoth will defend you when you sleep.

Here are a few tips courtesy of TrueKabbalah.org,

Try not to go to sleep when you are angry or depressed. There is nothing that gives the side of darkness power like depression. The opposite is also true. The happier you are, the less hold these forces have over you. Try to listen to some music before you say the Bedtime Shema and go to sleep.

Torah protects us more than anything. The more Torah you study during the day, the less a chance of a bad dream or a nocturnal emission. Try to study a little Torah before you go to sleep. Always sleep on your side. Never lay flat on your stomach, even when you do not want to sleep. Do not wear tight pajamas or underwear. Try shorts with no underwear, or boxers, or loose pajamas. Do not sleep with socks on, your feet should stick out from the blanket. Do not use a blanket that is too thick. Make sure there is no dirty laundry anywhere around your head. This includes pajamas that you decided not to use, yet still kept under your pillow. Get a kippa that you can wear while you are sleeping. Remove all metal objects from your body, such as keys. Do not eat anything that warms the body before going to sleep. This includes meat, eggs, milk, and cheese. Do not sleep alone in a house. If you have to, light a candle for a Tzaddik and place it in your room, it can help.

How do we, as a people, fight for Israel? How can we incorporate the mitzvah of guarding the Brit to possessing the Land of Israel?

Let’s start with Devarim, chapter 23, verse 15. It states: “For the L-rd thy G-d walks in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thy enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy, that He see no unclean thing in thee and turn away from there.”

In this verse, Hashem is telling us that when our nation is spiritually clean, He will drive our enemies away and Hashem will have cause to fight for us.

Rabbi Eliyahu Leon Levi, one of the great Kabbalists of our day stated that, “There is nothing in the world that so arouses the anger of HaKadosh Baruch Hu as the sin of transgressing the Covenant. Our hold on the Holy Land is in danger if we don’t live our lives in a holy fashion. Sexual purity is the essence of the Covenant between Avraham and G-d.”

If we don’t hold this mitzvah, we can lose our grip on the Holy Land.

This is the role of the Jewish People in the Global War on Terror. Our job is to be a Holy Nation in our Holy Land – it’s that simple. The fault line for the globe is at its heart: Jerusalem. If the Jewish People merit it, Jerusalem will be a beacon of spiritual light to the world. The greatest weapon mankind has in fighting off the worst form of human evil is a Jew fighting for the Land of Israel – physically and spiritually. It is our national struggle that keeps the world in one piece.

Is this correct? Are our enemies aware of this?

Every day, in our morning prayers, we are commanded as such:

"Remember what Amalek did to you by the way, when you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you by the way and smote the hindmost of you, all that were feeble in your rear, when you were faint and weary, and he feared not G-d (Devarim, 25:17).

After we left Egypt, Hashem personally guarded us. He sent clouds of Glory by day, and fire by night to guide us. He protected us under the canopy of His Holiness. How could we have possibly lost a battle to Amalek right after we left Egypt? How could they penetrate Hashem’s Divine Defenses?

Rabbi Tzaddok explains: there is nothing which causes the Divine Presence to flee from the world more than the spilling of semen in vain, which is the ultimate evil. This was Amalek's goal, to remove the Presence of G-d from the world so that mankind could be free to wallow in its lusts and evil inclination.

Amalek met us on the way and tried to entice us to spill seed by way of sexual temptation. Unfortunately, the weak willed men among us were unable to resist the impurities of sexual thoughts and had nocturnal emissions at night. Once they spilled seed, the Holy Presence left them and they were unprotected against Amalek. Without Hashem’s protection, we were lambs to the slaughter.

This is the very same battle we face today. The sons of Amalek try to defeat us by causing us to fall into the pit of sexual transgressions. With Hashem’s protection, there is no nation on earth that can defeat us. If we no longer merit Divine help, it is 15 million Jews against 500 million Arabs, and a billion of their Muslim brethren. Like the Jews in the Dessert, we don’t stand a chance.

The underlying conflict between Israel and the nations is the spiritual one. It dates back to the battle between Moshe and Balak. While we were in the dessert, a king, Balak, tried to destroy us. He knew that we thrived under Hashem’s Divine protection and that he could not overpower us militarily. He hired the greatest prophet among the nations to destroy Israel. His name was Bilaam. Bilaam had the same prophetic abilities as Moshe. When Balak asked Bilaam how to defeat the Jewish people, Bilaam told him that the key to victory was to bring the Jews to sin. He didn’t tell king Balak to sin by making them eat milk and meat together, nor did he instruct them to get the Jews to build fires on Shabbat. He had Balak send tens of thousands of the most physically attractive women to seduce the Jewish men into committing sexual depravities. They were successful. Until Pinchas the Kohen ended Balak’s campaign, 24,000 Jews lost their lives by transgressing in this manner.

It is no coincidence that the first man to conquer the Land of Israel, Joshua ben Nun, came from the half-tribe of Ephriam. Ephriam and Menashe were the two half-tribes that come directly from Joseph, and Joseph was known for his sexual morality. He was known as exceedingly handsome, he lived in Egypt most of his life, and despite the lewdness of that culture, and how much he was desired by all of the women in that society, and he never betrayed the laws of sexual morality. His descendant, Joshua, would merit conquering the Land of Israel. It is important to keep in mind that from the time Joshua ben Nun conquered the Land, we enjoyed a constant presence in our Holy Land until the destruction of the First Temple. Our sages say that the destruction of the first Jewish sovereignty was directly due to our sexual transgressions. Our greatest national era came about from our mitzvoth in the area of sexual morality. As a nation, we fell from the greatest heights when we transgressed concerning the exact same Commandments.

History has proven the statement in the Zohar that if we keep the laws of sexual morality there is no enemy that can harm us. The elder sages of the Kabbalah in Israel have warned that one of the root causes of the miseries we are all facing in Israel today is due to the sexual immorality that has taken over the Land. In Israel, nobody dresses modestly. Clubs and discothèques encourage all sorts of immoralities. Every city has a red light district. It is estimated that there are over 10,000 sex slaves in Israel.

Could this explain why despite possessing the most powerful army in the Middle East, Israel is being amputated bit by bit.

In order to possess the Land of Israel, one has to control himself and guard from these immoralities. As Rabbi Levi says, It isn’t enough just to live in the Holy Land. We have to live here in all the holiness that the Torah prescribes. We have to live here as spiritual Jews who bring light from this special place and shine it to the world.

What does it mean to possess the Land? It isn’t merely about the Jewish People dwelling securely in it. It is about giving yourself over to the Land and allowing it to connect with you. It is about creating an indivisible bond between yourself and the Land that can never be broken.

Do we really possess the Land? If we did, would we still be living here? If we honestly possessed the Land of Israel, we would be thinking about our Holy Land with the same energy and enthusiasm we do when we think about our stock portfolios? What about the people who live in Israel? 20,000 Israelis leave the country each year. Most Israelis dream about life in America.

How can we truly possess a Land that we don’t live in, or want to leave?

What about those brave souls who make the ultimate sacrifice and try to live in the Land of Israel? Do they eventually possess the Land? 50% of westerners who move to Israel, leave within 5 years. Do they possess the Land? I am not condemning anyone. Every Israeli, American, and western citizen is doing their best to live a good life in a great place. Israel is not, in any way, shape, or form, an easy place to live. It is a place with many uncertainties, an abrasive culture, and potential danger at every step. This is before you leave your first taxi!

The day to day challenges of living in Israel as an Israeli or westerner are overwhelming. How do you possess the Land governed by a group of people who deny their own faith? How do you remain in a place where half the people there wish you would just go home and take them with you? In order to survive in the Land of Israel, you need at least a thousand miracles a day to protect you. You need to find a joy and contentment there that is so intense and constant, you could never leave, no matter how adverse the circumstances become. Ask any Israeli who never left, any American who had the stamina to celebrate their Jewish Israeli grandchildren, how did you beat the odds? HOW DID YOU SURVIVE THIS LONG?

They will all tell you the same thing: this is Israel. This is my place. For better or for worse I cannot leave.

They are telling you that the Land possesses them. They are bound to it. They cannot survive anywhere else. As the spies said to the Children of Israel about this place: “it is a Land that consumes its inhabitants!” To possess the Land is to be possessed by the Land. The only way to do that is on a spiritual level. You need to be on a high spiritual level in order to merit the thousand miracles a day that keep you there. You can experience the true inner joys that the Land has to offer.

Most lands in the world are known for their material resources. The Swiss have their chocolate, the Americans have their money, and the Arabs have their oil. What mineral resource does the Land of Israel have? Nothing! We don’t need it, the Land’s greatest natural resource, other than the Jewish People, is its proximity to Hashem and its over-abundance of His presence.

It is no wonder why the capital of this place s an area devoid of any material or strategic value, placed in the center of the dessert. Jerusalem may be built on a hill, but there is one problem, one side of the hill is on even ground. It has natural defenses on three sides, but not four! What about economics? To thrive, a city is established near water. If you want to connect trade between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, why build a city 30 miles inside Land? Jerusalem is not known for its strategic or economic resources. It was built as a Holy City, as THE HOLY CITY. The Land of Israel is all about its spirituality. It boasts spirituality in its location, its resources, and in its capital city. The key to getting the most out of any Israel experience is to connect with the Land on a spiritual level. Unless you are enhancing the sensitivities of your neshama Israel is a place of soldiers, shwarma, and beaches. Without guarding the Brit, you are not expanding your spiritual abilities. You won’t truly feel the real energy of the Land. It takes chance to meet the right people in Israel that become your best friends. It takes chance to find the ideal community that you will never want to leave. It takes chance to find a job that you like, that will sustain you in the Land for as long as you want. It takes chance that the day to day nightmares that happen in Israel all the time won’t stop your resolve to remain there while almost 1 million Israelis and Jews couldn’t take it.

We are the Children of Avraham. WE DON’T BELIEVE IN CHANCE! THE CONCEPT OF COINCIDENCE IS AN ABOMINATION TO OUR FAITH! Everything comes from Above. Everything is done by Hashem. Hashem blessed each and every one of us with the opportunity to experience a thousand miracles a day in His sacred country.

I am among the 1 million who couldn’t hack it. A combat soldier at the age of 30, I was pretty tough. I survived 18 months in the Army. I lived in a settlement in Judea and withstood the challenges of Israel for over three years. However, I was not shmirat habrit during any of that time. I prayed every day, but I didn’t learn or observe the laws of sexual morality. I lived in a religious town, I volunteered to be a soldier, I did everything I thought was right to be happy there. The only thing I didn’t do was follow the laws of sexual morality. Despite all my efforts I failed. If it was ever possible to conduct a study, I’ll bet that more than 95% of the yordim like me who didn’t remain in the Land, like me, didn’t follow the laws of shmirat habrit.

This reveals a very powerful truth: Each and every one of us has the option to be like Joseph, and to see our children conquer the Land and successfully possess it. Or we can be like yerobam, the evil king of Israel who forced every Jew into every type of Torah transgression, and cause our children to be carried away to Babylon in exile.

It’s our choice.

Our sages state that the final redemption of Moshiach will come in the merit of the tsuva of shmirat habrit. The corrections we perform on our sexual immoralities can be the light that brings peace to the world. The Talmud states that the final generation before Moshiach will be one of the worst ever. Learning will be spurned, as will the scholars. The elderly will be looked down upon. We will be led by dogs. The worst type of people will be in control of the Jewish Nation. The last generation before Moshiach will be unique in that it will have no sense of shame or embarrassment. Think about just 50 years ago. Divorce was unheard of. Today, it is estimated that almost 70% of marriages end prematurely. Not having sex before marriage was seen as a commonly accepted practice among the mainstream of society. It was considered honorable if you spent your life with only one intimate partner. Today, the same honor it is seen by the masses with the same revulsion as if you were a pervert. Once upon a time, illegitimate children were seen as an abomination. A man would sooner marry the woman he impregnated than bear the shame of this disgrace. Today, movie stars who have children out of wedlock are put on the cover of popular magazines. We are in a period of great darkness. The world has totally distorted what is right and what is wrong. All the keys to our true happiness have been taken from us. Overwhelmed by impurity, we are literally living blind. But submerged in this darkness is a massive source of light and redemption. The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that the brightest sparks of Divine light are so bright, they had to be hidden beneath the deepest concentrations of darkness. The redemption we can unearth is so powerful, it can bring Moshiach and redeem the world. We just need to look a little deeper to find the strength.

2008-10-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Part 20 – The Battle for Your Wife

I thought that once I got married, my days of sexual immorality would be over. I quickly realized that being a good husband has many spiritual challenges. Instead of always giving into my sexual urges, I now need to constantly fight them, and to channel them correctly.

Not only must married men fight every impure sexual urge, they must win every time. The welfare of their family depends on it.

On top of that, we married men face an almost insurmountable challenge in today’s world: the internet. No other generation in Jewish history had to deal with this. The internet is the cheapest, most accessible, and simplest form of pornography than anything in existence. It is the ultimate place for clandestinely meeting women online and forming pseudo or actual relationships. Today’s world views this as normal. Having female friends on facebook, YouTube, or MySpace is considered borderline at best. It is not considered a form of adultery to engage in cybersex or to view pornography online. It is socially acceptable to talk with people in chat rooms. We convince ourselves that as long as you don’t actually do ‘the deed’ with someone else, you are not technically committing adultery. Unfortunately, there have never been more forms of “not technically committing adultery” than there are today they are destroying countless marriages.

For a married man this is by far the most dangerous way he can break the laws of shmirat habrit. Internet relationships and cyber porn are the biggest threats to a marriage today.

What makes this threat all the more toxic is the level of inappropriate internet usage among married men.

U.S. Congressional testimony, based on national scientific studies, determined that the majority of Internet users seeking help for problematic sexual behavior online are married men.

These studies have determined that pornography consumption is directly associated with the following: decreased marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction, infidelity, increased appetite for more graphic types of pornography and sexual activity associated with abusive, illegal or unsafe practices, devaluation of monogamy, marriage and child rearing, increased marital distress, an increasing number of people struggling with compulsive and addictive sexual behavior, and risk of separation and divorce, Hashem forbid!

When a child lives in a home where an adult is consuming pornography, he or she encounters the following dangers: decreased parental time and attention, increased risk of encountering pornographic material, increased risk of parental separation and divorce, Hashem forbid, and, increased risk of parental job loss and financial strain. Just the other day, one of my co-workers was joking with me about the first time he experienced pornography. It was a video he stole from his uncle’s attic when he was 11. Now he is married and has three sons. He realizes how his kids love to explore, and they discover places you wouldn’t think they could find. Today, it is the children and not the adults that get more and more computer savvy as time goes on. My friend told me that his biggest fear is what he will do when his children turn 11.

According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 62 percent of the lawyers polled said the Internet had been a significant factor in divorces they had handled during the last 12 months. Additionally, the following observations were made by the lawyers with regard to why the Internet had played a role in divorces that year:

68 percent of the divorce cases involved one party meeting a new love interest over the internet. 56 percent of the divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites. 47 percent of the divorce cases involved one party spending excessive time on the computer. 33 percent of the divorce cases cited excessive time communicating in chat rooms. Given these statistics, we should view our spouse’s activity with the same worry we view that persons relationship with an “old friend.”

I know this is asking a lot. We men like a certain amount of space we can call our own. To give our wives a magnifying glass over our computer is a pretty extreme measure. But with divorce rates at 70%, and the top cause of divorce being the internet, the situation is critical and the measures you need to take to protect your family are drastic.

What could be a greater way to show our loyalty to our loved ones than this? When your wife goes out with her friends and all they talk about is how much time their husbands spend online, your wife will be grateful. When one of the wives pensively asks, “I can only imagine what he does online?” your wife will appreciate what a wonderful man she has.

The good news is this: if you filter your internet, or simply not use it at home, the odds of your marriage being successful and joyous instantly double!

More than half of married cybersex users lose interest in relational sex, as have one-third of their partners. Spouses of pornography users often report being repulsed by the user’s sexual pursuits. Constant internet porn users continually make excuses to avoid sexual intimacy with their spouse. She ends up feeling hurt, angry, sexually rejected, inadequate, and unable to compete with computer images and sexy online women.

76% of all husbands who had an extramarital affair have used Internet pornography. 80% of people who have engaged in paid sex (i.e., prostitution) use Internet pornography. Pornography revenue is now greater than the combined revenues of all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises and is almost twice the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

It’s bad enough that the internet has destroyed the happiness shared between a husband and wife. When you add kids to the picture, the consequences of internet porn are outright tragic.

The following negative effects could impact children in homes where a parent’s compulsive and/or addictive sexual behavior is occurring: decreased parental time and attention both from the husband and the wife who is preoccupied with the behavior of the husband. Encountering pornographic material a parent has acquired. Overhearing a parent engaged in phone sex; Increased risk of parental separation and divorce; Increased risk for consuming pornography themselves and beginning this process all over again; Exposure to the objectification of human beings, especially women; Witnessing and/or being involved in parental conflict; and witnessing and/or experiencing stress in the home related to online sexual activities.

A child of a single parent or a divorced parent is twice as likely to end up in jail, and three times as likely to engage in criminal or self-destructive behavior like drugs, alcohol, or petty-theft and vandalism.

These facts cannot understate the importance of focusing your energies on your wife and away from the internet. A married man cannot engage in internet porn, no matter how tempting it is. Not only is pornography, in all of its forms, a detestable sin against Hashem, it is the core reason why there are so many divorces and unhappy marriages going on right now. It may be the core reason for the strife between couples still married. The RamBam states, in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tsuva, that a man’s sins against G-d can be forgiven on Yom Kippur, but his sins against his fellow man are not. To receive forgiveness, one must ask the person and receive it. Our sins against our family are sins not only against G-d, but against people as well.

I am a recovering sex addict. For over 2 years, I have actively kept myself off the bad sites. I have done this through web filters, giving my wife total access to my computer so she can check where I have been online, and through personal restraint.

Still, there are times where all I want to do is go onto these forbidden places. It is usually viewing a sexy web ad on a “good” site that sets my urges off. It is so difficult to overcome the desire to click on the ad, or on to another site with more.

What stops me is my family. After researching these stats I know what porn is – the destruction of my marriage. I love my wife. I have a wonderful son and I couldn’t survive a day without seeing him. Going on to one site will begin a process that will destroy my family. It’s that simple.

Resisting these urges also brings my family closer. The bond between a husband and wife is a spiritual one. The more I exert myself spiritually for the love of my wife and son, the more spirituality Hashem blesses our relationship. Our bond to each other becomes closer and stronger with each spiritual victory. Shmirat HaBrit truly brings peace to the family.

It is a joy that is beyond almost anything imaginable. It is a love that we all strive for with our loved ones, and with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. This love is not possible if one is hooked on porn and not making any effort to change. You get one heart in life. this wonderful gift that Hashem gave us can only be attached to one specific love at a time.

It is of the most critical importance that you install a good internet blocker. If your blocker can prevent you from getting to porn, it most likely can block your children. Give your wife the password. Manually enter into the blocker the keywords and sites you like the most. In merely communicating to your wife that you are going to fight for her, you are telling her how important she is to you. This is one of the best ways you can tell your wife how much you love her, and what being with her means to you. Your wife will return this affection to you 10 fold – I promise!

On a national level, the sin of pgam habrit has severely suppressed the growth of the Jewish People.

Just two generations ago, a couple would get married, have 2.2 kids, and celebrate their 50th anniversary together. Today, the allure for marriage – even for a day - is gone. A lack of sexual morality is the core reason why people are not getting married. It is causing mass devastation on the Jewish community. The 2007 census of the Jewish People revealed that the U.S. Jewish population has decreased over the last year. In a country with no form of deadly anti-Semitism, how can this be?

The statistics for Israeli youth are no different. Where is the physical link between Shmirat HaBrit and national defense? Stagnant birth rates among the non-Haredi public in Israel has upset the demographic balance between Jews and Arabs living in the Land of Israel. It is this demographic imbalance that has been the chief argument for the State of Israel to evacuate huge swaths of Land and bring our enemies that much closer to our civilian population centers.

Let’s try an exercise. Which are the two regions of the world that use the most pornography? America and Europe.

Which are the most promiscuous empires known to man? Rome and Greece.

What was the most promiscuous nation in the Torah? Egypt. Egypt represents impurity. Egypt represents every ideal that goes against the core of what it means to be a Jew.

Let’s review the list of emotional calamities associated with too much internet porn and other forms of sexual immorality in one’s life and compare them with the value systems of the Jewish People, and contrast them with the nations who have tried to destroy us: First is the devaluation of monogamy. Where mistresses, and extramarital sex have been a part of virtually every western empire, including the United States, the Torah specifically includes the commandment, lo tinaf, or don’t commit adultery. Not only is this a Commandment, it is one of the 10 Commandments. It is also one of the seven universal laws incumbent upon all men, Jewish and not-Jewish. Extramarital romance of any kind is seen as an abomination. Next, decreased satisfaction with a partner’s affection, and physical appearance. While the Talmud requires a man to be physically attracted to a woman in order for him to marry her, we do not place emphasis on a woman’s physical appearance. Each Shabbat we sing Ashet Chayil, A Woman of Valor. At the end we sing, ‘false is grace, and vain is beauty, a G-d fearing woman, she should be praised.’ Jewish values do not place emphasis on a woman’s looks. The body is seen as nothing but a mere placeholder for the soul and it is the soul that defines a person. It is a woman’s modesty that has kept the Jewish People strong since our national birth. Since the first Jewish couple, where Sarah had a higher level of prophecy than Avraham, it is the women who are on a higher natural spiritual level than the men. The men were complacent in the sin of the golden calf, but the women refused to participate. It was the men who listened to the 10 spies’ evil report and surrendered their place in Israel. The women wanted to press on and enter the Land. One of our greatest Rabbis, Rabbi Akiva, would have been content to remain a simple shepherd all of his life. It was his wife, Rachel, who convinced him to pursue a life of Torah. She was a wealthy woman who gave up everything for the sake of her husband. Over the last 2,000 years, how many tens of millions of Torah scholars have increased their Torah knowledge and brought Divine light into the world because they learned from the works of Rabbi Akiva? We have this through the sacrifices his wife made? The Talmud specifically attributes Rabbi Akiva’s greatness to his wife. For a Jew to see a fellow Jew as merely a physical object is the deepest abomination imaginable. To deny the spirit of someone in favor of their physical makeup runs contrary to our very existence. Jews get their name from one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jews are descendants from the tribe of Yehuda. The tribe itself contains the very Name of our Creator! At our essence we are spiritual beings and not physical objects. It is the nations like Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe, and the United States that have tried to convince us otherwise.

Excessive porn leads to doubts about the value of marriage and a decreased desire to have children while viewing non-monogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior for married men. The nations of the world have upheld these values since Egypt and Greece. Our nation stands in direct confrontation to these debaucheries. The first mitzvah in the Torah is the commandment that Hashem gave to Adam, Be fruitful and multiply. Over the last 20 years, the growth of the Palestinian population in the Land of Israel and the growth of the Jewish population in the Land of Israel have been virtually identical. Despite Arab claims to the contrary, the Palestinians are not changing the demographic nature of the State of Israel. It is true that statistically, the secular population growth of Israel significantly lags the Arab population growth, the population growth among the religious communities in Israel more than makes up for it. It is estimated that the average Haredi family in Israel has more than 8 children. The religious community takes very seriously every mitzvah, including the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply. Core Jewish values include marriage, monogamy, fidelity, loyalty, and lots, and lots, of children. This mitzvah has maintained the Jewish People through every exile, as it saves the Jewish People to this day! It is only now that we have all assimilated into Western culture that we consider 2 children as the normal family. In Jewish terms, this is not the case. Hashem said to us in Sefer Devarim, “I have set before you life and death, Choose life! We can be like the Holy in Israel who strengthen the Jewish people with this mitzvah, or mimic the nations of the world and literally waste away.

The values of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe and the United States place supreme emphasis on the body and physical pleasures. The Jewish world has combated each and every empire from then until now by placing our focus on the neshama, the soul. How do we do this today? How do we escape the bonds of the world we are living in and regain our spiritual identity as Jews?

We remember the Exodus from Egypt.

Every day, we are to recite six remembrances after our morning prayers. The first two remembrances both specifically state that we have to keep in mind these miracles all of the days of our life. Both of them have directly to do with leaving Egypt, and standing before Hashem and receiving the Torah at Sinai. Every day we are commanded to remember that we are not like the nations of the earth. We are commanded to focus on breaking the boundaries of what we see, and to focus on a spiritual existence. We are commanded every day to stand before Hashem at Sinai. We must all constantly leave our immediate surroundings and resist the temptation to be like everyone. We must remember that we were once slaves, like those individuals who are slaves to their passions. We were once idolaters, like those people who profane the Holy for impurities. G-d took mercy upon us. He brought us out of Egypt, and out of Greece, and out of Rome. He gave us the Torah, which is the perfect manual on how to escape the physical lie we see before our eyes and to focus on Him and His universe. Each day we successfully resist the temptation to so much as look at an immodestly dressed woman, we are not merely averting our eyes. We are reliving the Exodus of our ancestors. We are revealing Hashem’s Oneness at Sinai. Gradually weaning oneself off of a sex based existence is the true key to freedom. Each day we break free of our surroundings to follow the Torah is a day where we escape Egypt and stand before Hashem at Sinai.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s daily market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a weekly review of the major articles published around the world. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, and tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!

2008-10-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Part 19 – Fighting the Behemoth when you are at your Weakest

Let’s recap what we’ve learned.

In order to fully accomplish this mitzvah, all you have to do is control all of your actions, thoughts, your eye movements, speech, and even your dreams against the biggest urge in existence, for the rest of your life.

Sounds easy, right?

It’s not impossible. You may be telling yourself this, but it’s not. Many people feel this way at the beginning. Many people feel this way after they have been successful in the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit for years and are suddenly faced with a tempting billboard. The urge never leaves, the temptation is always lurking. The Satan wasn’t designed to take breaks.

What happens when we fail? What happens when we give it our all and, despite all of this, we still fall into the grasp of impurity? The sages talk about the greatness of this mitzvah. They warn us about the dangers of acting in contradiction to what is Commanded us. Do they have anything to say for those who sincerely wish to improve their lives, yet constantly fail every time they make a serious attempt?

Rabbi Nachman stated that every person, no matter how many sins he committed in the past can always turn it around and start over again. If a person continues trying over and over again despite all of the obstacles that are in his path, he is guaranteed that he will emerge victorious. Rabbi Nachman reminds us that part of the process of spiritual growth involves ups and downs. Some days you will feel spiritually strengthened. Then, when you wake up the next morning, you may not feel as strong as you once did. Don’t be alarmed, it’s natural. Hashem is merely taking off the training wheels and testing your ability to continue with less assistance. You have passed the test and now Hashem is “raising the bar” so to speak. This is especially applicable to people who exert themselves as much as they can, and still do something forbidden. We can pass 100 tests, and then face a greater temptation because Hashem is proud of us and wants to give us the opportunity to pass a harder test – and fail the first time. It’s okay. They key is to NEVER GIVE UP. Even if you try and fail hundreds of times, you need to keep getting up. You need to assess what it was that went wrong and determine what needs to be done to fix it. If you sincerely regret what you did, and do what needs to be done to prevent sinning in the future, even if you have to go through the process many times, in the end you will win.

After holding the laws of Shmirat HaBrit, I have noticed some recurring patterns. Every four to five months I get a “Niuf attack” (Niuf are impure fantasies). For whatever reason, all I want to do is think about sex. One part of my mind is daydreaming impure thoughts all the time, and the other part of my mind is screaming to Hashem that I am so sorry for thinking these thoughts. These periods in my life are extremely challenging. I can go for so long on such a comfortable spiritual level, and in a moment I am at war. I have consulted several Rabbis about this. One Rabbi told me that niuf is an emotional reaction to the uncertainties of life. If I am in a stressful situation, the “control” I “experience” during the fantasies put my mind at relative and temporary ease. He suggested O take an accounting of everything that was going on in my life and find out what was causing me the stress.

It worked, or so I thought. The niuf went away and I recaptured my mind. Five months later, I got another attack. This time I beat it by reciting Tikkun HaKlali every morning. After going through 3 of these phases of these attacks over 2 years, I came to an amazing conclusion. Every niuf attack preceded something wonderful in my life. In some cases, the attack happened right before I experienced a surge in spiritual energy. Sometimes it happened right before a great event in my personal life. It felt like right before Hashem blessed me with something spiritual or physical, the Satan was given the opportunity to give it his all to defeat me. This is wonderful news for all of us. It implies that if you are on the right path and suddenly it feels like you are about to lose everything – like you are up against something you can’t possibly beat – HANG ON!

It is at that very moment you are about to claim victory.

Whatever you do don’t fall into despair -- especially when you have a relapse. After we have an emission – for any reason – our first instinct is NOT to study. Not to pray. Not to go Shul. We say to ourselves that we are too dirty. We have sullied ourselves. This is the yetzer talking. It is precisely during those moments after you sin that you should run to the Torah. You should run to Shul. The morning after you make a mistake, you need to say to Hashem that you regret what you did. That you made a mistake. Make no delay in saying to yourself and to Hashem that you acknowledge you did something bad, and that you want to do tsuva for it as quickly as possible. There is nothing that says you cannot perform a mitzvah minutes after doing an avera. The key is to get right back up and fight.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov stated that if you have a nocturnal emission during the night and the next morning you go to a mikveh and recite the Tikkun HaKlali psalms – you have nothing to worry about. Rebbe Nachman is prescribing tsuva within hours of this sin. Not only is it okay to do tsuva the moment after we commit a sin – it is encouraged!

When you perform a mitzvah, your soul is elevated. As your soul gains strength, you are given bigger tests. As you pass these tests, you get spiritually stronger, and stronger. Challenges that used to seem difficult are now simple. A lifestyle that once seemed impossible is now reality. As you go higher and higher, you can do more and more. Then, the unexpected happens. You fall down. You make a mistake. Immediately, your soul temporarily falls down to the level is was on before you began to strengthen yourself. Instinctively, you fall into despair. You feel bad that you committed this sin. You also feel as if it will be impossible to get up again. What was once a better reality is now, given the state of spirituality you have just fallen into, an impossible spiritual level to maintain? This is the easiest trap we can fall into. It is natural to look at the mountain we just fell off of and decide that it is too much effort to try to climb up it again. You need to remember that, this it is a big test. The first tsuva you can do in order to rectify the sin you committed is to look up and not down. The second tsuva is to immediately open a sefer, go to a minyan, or confess your sins directly to Hashem.

Don’t fall into the lie that this world has too many temptations for us to overcome. Don’t fall into the falsehood that because we don’t learn in Yeshiva 18 hours a day, this mitzvah is not for us. In fact, it is immensely harder for us to keep this mitzvah while dealing with everything we see in the city than it is for many Yeshiva students who never venture far from their modest communities. It is these tests that demand more from us which can bring so much light into the world. We have opportunities that very few people do. We are fighting a spiritual war on a battle front that can bring unparalleled victories to the Jewish People. There may be losses. There may be casualties. But this is a war of life and death. Don’t kid yourselves. Given the tenuous state of Jerusalem, the nuclear ambitions of Iran, and the serious dangers the Jewish People face all over the world, this battle is one of life and death.

Can any of us afford to give up?

When I was in basic training, I fell out on a run once. It was very embarrassing. That night, my Commander pulled me into his office and spoke very calmly. He said to me simply, “Dave, you can be slow, stupid, or sluggish. Our army can deal with almost any type of human frailty people have. The one and only one thing you can NEVER, EVER, do, is quit. The best soldiers are not the ones that run fast, shoot straight, or shine their shoes well. They are the ones that never stop fighting.”

We need to remember that forgiveness and salvation are still obtainable. Hashem is Merciful and Compassionate. The key is not to despair and to get up and try again. Desires are not eradicated. They come back from time to time. Sometimes, you can battle them, and defeat the forces of the Satan. The yetzer harah is turned back and Hashem is smiling from His throne in Heaven.

Then, when you least expect it, the satan attacks again. This time the assault on our senses is even worse. The urges are way over our heads. It feels like we cannot possibly overcome them. Sometimes, when you are alone, and you feel a little, well, heated, you cannot help but start fantasizing. You are truly overwhelmed with the irresistible urge to go onto a forbidden website, or see a forbidden image, and do a forbidden act.

Sometimes these massive urges hit us and it feels like we will go completely insane if we don’t obey them. What do we do in those situations? How do we combat them? Is there anything we can do?

When this specific urge hits us, it really hits us.

There are several things you can do to fight it right off the bat. The first is to run. Seriously. Promise yourself that whatever it is you want to do, you will do it, but in three hours. The urges are always fleeting. If you can resist them for as short as an hour, by the time the hour passes, you will be thinking about something else. If you can hold out for three hours, while the urge may or may not still be there, it won’t be as insanely intense as it was during the time you made the promise. These intense urges are not for long periods of time. Second, realize that you are in a wonderful position. As hard as it may be to contemplate at that very moment, you need to remember that the more strongly you are attacked by sexual urges, the greater rectification you perform when you fight and break them. Holiness is released from the power of the darkness that previously engulfed it. Sexual fantasies are sent to a person so that he will extract from the worst concentrations of darkness, the greatest sources of Divine light. The victory is Holy, but the battle is gruesome – and everybody gets dirty when they fight. Another way to escape when your urges rise to insane levels is to leave your home. We commit most of our sins when we are alone. Get out of the house. Go for a walk. Go to the diner and read a book. Go to a corner and talk to a friend. Go to Shul! Whatever you do, don’t turn on the TV, or go on the internet. Just go out and try not to be alone for an hour. One who breaks his sexual desires will have holy dreams.

Keep striving to be Shmirat HaBrit. Even if you fall, every day that you struggle, you are strengthening the foundations of your soul. Over time and it can be months, or years, or decades, the foundations of your neshama will be able to combat these urges – no matter how powerful they get!

It’s kind of like fighting a bully. Every month, this bully picks a fight with you. Every time he attacks, he beats you up. Knowing that you are easy prey, he keeps coming at you and you keep getting knocked out. One day, you can’t take it anymore. You go to the gym and start training. Every day you are in the gym – 30 minutes of weights, running, and hitting the punching bag. It’s not a lot, but gradually you begin to feel improvement.

Then, the dreaded day arrives. You are a little faster and a little stronger. The fight begins. Two minutes later you are lying on your back with a bloody lip. Instead of crying on the pavement, you pick yourself up. The next morning you go back to the gym. Diligently, you spend the next 30 days putting in the effort to get stronger for the next fight.

A month passes. Your lip has healed, and you are feeling better. The bully comes back and the fight begins. You can feel the improvement. This time it takes him 5 minutes to knock you to the floor. Once again, you are faced with the prospect of despair and you don’t succumb. You haul your bruised body back to the gym and promise yourself to work even harder for the next fight. It’s back to the gym for the 30 minute sessions.

Months and months of consistency have finally paid off. When the bully arrives, you are in the greatest shape of your life. You feel bigger, and faster, and the bully is going to have his hands full today. The fight begins. For 20 minutes, the bully hits you with everything in his arsenal. As you fight back, you sense his knees about to buckle. You feel as if victory is in sight. You never fought this hard for anything before. All your efforts have led up to this moment. The moment where you are about to experience the greatest victory of your life. Just as you are about to deck the monster for the very first time –

He comes at you with an uppercut from nowhere.

Like every other month, you are lying on your back. All you can do is say to yourself that it doesn’t matter. You can try as hard as you can end exert yourself to the max, but it doesn’t matter – he still gets the best of you. Why bother trying if the results are going to be the same? It would be easier to just let him win. That way, you would have an extra 30 minutes each day to do whatever you wanted.

Why bother?

This is the moment of truth. This is where the ultimate battle is won or lost.

You realize that if you quit now, he will get the best of you for the rest of your life. He will literally ‘own’ you every time. If there was ever a time to reach deep inside yourself for strength, this is it.

You decide to do the impossible – you keep fighting.

Against a beaten body and a broken spirit, you get yourself to the gym. Every day, no matter how much your willpower has betrayed you, you force yourself to the gym for your 30 minute workout. Mentally and physically, you exert yourself like never before. When the month is up, you are in peak physical condition.

Then, the dreaded day arrives.

The fight begins. Five minutes pass and you are still on your feet. Then 10 minutes, then 20. This goes on for 30 minutes. The bully hits you harder and harder. You fight back with every ounce of energy you can muster. Forty five minutes into the fight, right when you are getting your second wind, something happens that you have never seen before.

The bully stops fighting. He simply gives up and walks away. It is the greatest victory of your life. For that moment, you feel ten feet high.

I wish I could say that you have beaten him for good. I wish I could tell you that he will never return to fight you again.

That’s just not the world we live in. Hashem didn’t create the world so we could come close to Him just once in our lifetimes. He didn’t create man so we could fight for His Light and then call it a day. He wants us to always win battles for Him. He wants us to constantly build merit for ourselves, the people we love the most, all of our brothers and sisters in the Nation of Israel.

Only Moshiach can kill the bully. In the future, only he will be able to defeat the Satan and destroy the yetzer hara for good.

As for us, we will have to go back to the gym tomorrow. The bully will be back. He will be bigger and stronger and you have to keep fighting every day to be fit enough to fight him off the next time he attacks.

Each time you push a lustful thought out of your mind, or turn away from an erotic image, or break free from the prison of insane urges, you are making a great tikkun in all of the spiritual worlds. Every victory over the yetzer hara weakens the power of the forces of darkness in the world, and exalts the Name of Hashem more than any other action. This comes directly from the Zohar.

This means that we can do so much good for the entire world every time we fight the bully. Baruch Hashem!

Have confidence that a person who comes to purify himself is granted Divine assistance. A small victory that one achieves while battling the forces of darkness on the streets of Manhattan, can be more precious in the eyes of Hashem than a big victory achieved in streets of Meah Sharim.

What if you are a senior citizen? What if you have been faithfully married for decades? Are you someone who needs to learn this? An elderly man can have sexual thoughts. He can look at immodestly dressed women in the street or on the internet. We must remember that the sin of pgam habrit is one of the mind. The mind has a greater propensity to work at full capacity long after the body is capable of. The sins and tikkunim for these specific acts are just as close to someone who is 80 as it is to someone who is 20.

Everybody is involved if this battle between the Children of Edom (Greece – Rome – Europe – America) and the Children of Israel.

2008-10-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

Part 18 - You can feel it!

Of the tikkunim we have mentioned so far, there is one that is very, very powerful. A great tikkun for this sin is to learn study Torah. In learning about the mitzvah of Shmirat Habrit, you are performing the mitzvah of tsuva for past actions, as well as performing the mitzvah of learning Torah.

Our sages state that the spilling of seed causes a blemish in the mind. A great healing for the damage we do to our mental abilities is to occupy oneself with Torah. Torah study has a very positive impact on the soul, on the Jewish People, and on the world as a whole. It is a tremendous way to connect to Hashem. Each day in our daily prayers, we go over the impact of Torah learning. At the beginning of the morning service, we recite from the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, 127a: These are the precepts of which a person enjoys their fruits in This World, but whose principal remains intact for him in the World to Come. These are they: honoring ones father and mother, the bestowal of kindness, early attendance at the house of study morning and evening, hospitality to guests, visiting the sick, providing for a bride, escorting the dead, absorption in prayer, bringing peace between man and his fellow man, and the study of Torah is equivalent to them all.

The greatest mitzvah we can perform for our benefit in both this world and the next is the study of Torah.

What exactly is Torah study?

Is it two men in Yeshiva discussing a Gemara about the Laws of a Nazirite vow? Is it a lecture on kosher dating? Is it someone reading the Book of Isaiah? All three qualify as Torah learning. We are learning Torah right now.

Torah learning is not merely a passive act. It is not like reading a book where you acquire knowledge or the experience of a story. When you learn Torah, you are unlocking the secrets of the Universe. You are actively bringing your neshama (soul) closer to Hashem. The experience of reading Torah is a lot different than in reading the Wall Street Journal.

Philosophers like to argue the eternal question, what came first? Was it the chicken, or was it the egg. What was the beginning of existence? Our sages have the answer. When Hashem created the Universe, He did it using the Torah as its blueprint. The details about everything in existence come straight from the Torah. This means that the answers to all the questions about our existence are in the Torah! Before wasting money on marriage counselors, psychiatrists, or scientific theories, we can find clarity in all aspects of our daily lives from our own faith. The Torah not only addresses how we should live, it dictates the laws of life itself.

For example, what is the exact length of a lunar month? NASA was able to determine that the exact time it took for the moon to orbit the earth was 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds, or 29.530588 days. Around 2,000 years ago, Rabbi Gamaliel states the exact time for a lunar month in the Talmud. His calculations put a month at 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds, or, 29.530588 days. He did this before satellites, computers, and supersensitive watches that can time to the millionth of a second. There are many examples of this. When you learn Torah, you are unlocking the doors to the secrets of daily existence. When you learn Torah, you are tackling all of life’s daily issues from the Source.

Torah learning is at the core of a Jew’s existence. However in today’s world finding the time for Torah learning can be difficult. We all have our daily jobs to do. We have our morning routine. All of us have the daily demands of a job, spouse, children, and the daily errands we have to do each day.

With all of these obligations, is it possible to study?

Absolutely. For something this important, we make time. At the end of our lives, we will have to account for all our deeds before the heavenly court. Each of us will have to face a day of judgment for everything we did – or did not do – in our lives. One of the questions we are asked is if we set a fixed time for Torah learning. We recite in our prayers that Torah learning benefits us in this world and in the next one.

In Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s The Path of the Just, the great Kabbalist attacks this very issue.

He asks an important question: why do we work so hard? We work hard because we all strive for excellence. We want to be on the highest rungs of the social ladder. We want to have wealth, and honor, and respect. It is human nature to want to be a step above the guy right next to you.

This is why we work. This is why we are prone to exchange time we could be using to learn Torah for extra hours in the office – so we can all advance our careers, our wealth, and our reputation.

The Ramchal (Rabbi Luzzatto) explains that this is EXACTLY why we need to portion out a part of our day to learn Torah.

The next world is very much the opposite of this one. In this world, our status is based on our physical labor. We are viewed by our peers in terms of how much we make? How nice is our home? How prestigious is your job? In the next world, praise is ALSO based on our labors in this one. However, it is our spiritual labors we are servants to in the next one! All of the physical and emotional joys we all work so hard for are not as enjoyable as the spiritual pleasures in the next world. Once we realize this, it becomes equally as important to learn Torah, and to build your place in Heaven, as it is to pursue anything else on earth. that determine our fate. If we don’t set aside time for Torah in this world, even if we are materially successful, our place in the next world can be very low. The same maids, taxi drivers, and personal assistants that were servants to us in this life – may become the people that were servants to us in this life -- may become our superiors in the next one! All of the physical and emotional joys we all work so hard for are not as enjoyable as the spiritual pleasures in the next world. Once we realize this, it becomes equally as important to learn Torah, and build your place in Heaven, as it is to pursue everything else on earth.

This is why we need to learn every day. While we have the free will to actively choose to serve Hashem. Once our life is over, the window of opportunity is shut closed.

Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein said that in Heaven, there are a billion people asking Hashem for another chance.

For an opportunity this crucial – we find a way, we make time.

How do we do it? How do we meet the needs of the people we love, perform the daily responsibilities we all have, and set aside time for Torah? Doesn’t learning Torah mean that we have to change the whole fabric of our daily lives? Doesn’t this duty require that everything be different?

Yes and no.

We can learn Torah within the parameters of our day to day routine. You can learn Torah so many different ways. Along with the traditional method of sitting with a learning partner and opening up a page of Gemara, the 21st century provides us all with a lot of innovative ways which we can set aside time for daily learning. I have posted them on my site, 25 Ways to Help Israel. It is the page, 5 Ways to Incorporate Torah into Your Life without Changing a Thing.

A great way to learn is to listen to a lecture on your MP3. Once upon a time, a lecture was a logistical undertaking. You had to find out where it was, get directions, and then spend as much time commuting to and from the lecture as you did attending it. Now you can cut out the schlep. Modern technology has enabled us to download Torah lectures from the internet, to your computer, to your MP3 player. In many instances, you can even download lectures from your computer to the MP3 player in your cell-phone. In doing so you can learn Torah during your daily commute, over your lunch break or even during an evening walk.

Do you realize the power of a Torah lesson during your commute? According to Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi, there are 60,000 mitzvot you are performing in a single hour. The Chofetz Chiam estimated that the average person speaks about 200 words per minute. Assuming each word has 5 letters on average, over the course of a 60 minute Torah podcast, you will be learning 60,000 letters of Torah! That’s quite a lot of mitzvoth. Imagine what you are doing if you listen to a lecture 365 days a year? Or 220 workdays a year? One simple addition to your everyday workload in this world has so many wonderful consequences to our ‘earnings’ in the next one. There are many sites where you can simply download lectures. Aish HaTorah and Chabad have websites with thousands of Torah lessons. Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi is my favorite lecturer and he is available on his Divine Information site. The website Torah Anytime has hundreds of lectures which you can download as well. You can save these lectures on your computer, and copy them to any hand held device.

Every morning you have the opportunity to turn your subway into a Yeshiva by performing 60,000 mitzvot on your daily commute! Twice a day we can integrate Torah learning to our daily lives without changing our routines at all. Someone told me that if you read half a chapter of Torah a day, in a year you can read the entire Torah! Reading half a chapter of Torah can be done in a matter of minutes. Every seven years, thousands of Jews across the world celebrate learning the ENTIRE TALMUD. They accomplished this monumental feat by learning one page a day.

Some of the best accomplishments are made in gradual increments.

We also learn by reading articles. Everyone reads the morning paper. How about downloading a couple of articles from Torah sites? My two favorite sites are from Aish HaTorah and Chabad. The articles about Jewish Faith from Breslov International are also amazing reads. They have articles about the portion of the Torah we study for that week, Jewish ethics, Jewish history, Jewish Faith and publish features on the major issues we all face each day. What does the Torah say about relationships? What does the Torah say about dating? About marriage? About the value of time itself? We learned that the Torah covers all of existence which means that every single aspect of your life where you have questions, you can search the Torah for answers. These articles do exactly that. They provide Torah solutions to the day to day challenges of our daily life. Along with gathering insights to a happier life, you are fulfilling a major mitzvah and performing a great service to Your Creator. Along with printing out articles, you can read them from the net.

We can make a daily ritual of reading a couple of articles from Torah websites before we surf the web.

WARNING! We are commanded in the Torah not to steal. Any job is a legal agreement. You agree to perform a specific task, and your employer agrees to pay you for that task. Taking time off outside your lunch or coffee break for any purpose is considered a form of theft! You are taking money from your employer, and giving nothing back in return. Even if you are taking “downtime” to perform the mitzvah of Torah learning, you are transgressing the eighth of the Ten Commandments not to steal.

Rabbi Luzzatto uses this exact example in The Path of the Just. It is very important to learn Torah – please don’t turn this tremendous mitzvah into a sin by taking time from work to do so. If you have any questions, please consult a Rabbi. You can ask a Rabbi anything at this website.

A very pleasant way to incorporate Torah into your life is to go to amazon.com and find a good book on Judaism. You can select anything. You can read about how to become more observant, why to become more observant, what being Kosher is all about, what are the laws of Jewish sexual morality. How do we cope with the specific phase of life you are living right now? How about improving the relationships we have with the members of our family, or our friends? Why not alternate between reading a book on the New York Times best seller list, and a book on Am Yisrael’s best seller list?

Another way is to get a Haveruta. A haveruta is a learning partner. You sit with another person and learn Torah together. Today, you can learn with someone on the phone. You can be at home, or at lunch, or even on a train, and sit with a book and learn with a Torah scholar on the other end of the line. This is good for those who have a free hour on Sundays, those who are early to rise, or would like to better utilize some of the time they spend watching TV or surfing online.

Keep in mind that we will be seeing a lot more beautiful sunrises in our future. As you take on more and more of the laws of Shmirat HaBrit, you will be surprised as to how early you will be getting up in the morning. You will be sleeping less and less and you will function with more energy and alertness. Going from 8 hours of sleep a day to 6.5 hours of sleep a day gives you 90 minutes of totally free time. This is time you never planned to have and, therefore, have nothing scheduled for it. Why not dedicate some of this time to learning? You can read a chapter from the Five Books of Moses, or the Tanach each day? You can learn a line from the Book of Jewish Ethics, or Pirkei Avot? You can even create a prayer session, or increase the amount of time you pray. In observing the laws of Shmirat HaBrit, we will be better equipped to fulfill the verse in Psalm 57, “I wake up the dawn.” According to the Shulchan Aruch, the verse implies that “I awake the dawn, but the dawn does not awake me.” In guarding more of the laws of sexual morality, we literally create time out of thin air. We can create a fixed time for Torah learning and prayer in this space alone and incorporate Hashem into our lives very efficiently. This sanctifies our day and infuses us with even more energy to take on life’s daily challenges.

Another great Tikkun is to cry. Crying is very difficult. In almost 25 years, I have yet to shed a tear. However, the tears any of us shed bring great light to the world. They are a good atonement for the sin of gazing at women. Chazal, our sages, teach that the eyes see, the heart desires, and then the body acts. A great correction for misusing the eyes given to us by Hashem is to use those very same organs to shed tears. If one cannot shed tears, we can express regret in our hearts when we pray.

Every time you are successful in garnering the energy to resist the temptation to peek at these people, you are bringing massive amounts of light into this world and performing a big tsuva. Every time you fall, and make the mistake of ‘checking out’ that woman in the seat next to you, or peering at that face online, you are making a stain on your soul. If you can’t cry every time you succumb to temptation, at least express sincere regret that you weren’t able to hold back yourself. Crying over ones sins is a very high level of Kedusha, regret is just beneath it.

When you do tsuva for sexual sins, you will feel much more Divine energy inside you. You will be happier, your days will be full with doing, you will accomplish much more with your life. Eventually, you will do so much more. You will realize that had you taken on this mitzvah sooner, you could have done so much more with yourself a lot sooner.

The heights we could have reached sooner and the peaks we could be standing on today had we performed this tsuva a little sooner are enough to cause us regret.

When you pray for forgiveness, whether in the daily Shemonei Esrei prayers, in Psalms or in personal prayer, have this regret in mind.

It is a fallacy to limit a mitzvah to an act. It is an incomplete assumption to feel that in order to perform a mitzvah, you have to physically do something. An emotion can be a mitzvah. Feeling regret over past actions is a mitzvah. The feeling is an act of tsuva. The same Divine Light we can bring to the world by performing the act of prayer or Torah learning, we can bring by the ACT OF FEELING regret.

Each day we can perform hundreds, even thousands of mitzvoth in simply utilizing our prayers, our actions, and even our feelings towards Holiness.

2008-10-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Part 17 - Energize your Inner Strength

Seven times the righteous one will fall, and seven times the righteous one will get up. As for the evil one’s, they will fail the first time and remain wicked.

Proverbs (24:16)

What are specific acts we can do to rectify our souls?

One of the best ways to re-strengthen our souls is to go to a mikveh. A mikveh is a natural body of water that a Jew goes to in order to spiritually purify himself. Many religious Jews will go to a mikveh before Shabbat. All Jews are supposed to go to a mikveh right before Yom Kippur. Going to a mikveh is simple. You take off all your clothes, as well as rings or other jewelry, and totally submerge yourself under the water. That’s it.

This simple act makes a very powerful tsuva for your soul.

Immersing in a mikveh repairs the damage done to your soul through acts of pgam habrit. As discussed before, the act of spilling seed creates hundreds of thousands of souls that have no physical body to occupy. They become captured by the forces of impurity. These trapped souls suffer greatly. They hang around you and make sure you suffer along with them. Have you ever thought things you found repulsive? Did it feel like the thoughts which entered your mind were really not yours? What’s happening are the spiritual souls that you spilled out to the ground are torturing you for the situation you put them in.

Immersing in a mikveh is one of the most effective ways to fight this. Immersing in a mikveh releases many of these souls from their predicament. It reduces the forces of impurity that constantly surround you, and allow your soul to strengthen. When your body does something in this world your soul does the same thing in the higher worlds. As your body immerses in the water in this world, your soul is immersing in a mikveh up above.

The impact on us is amazing.

A mikveh will strengthen your soul and sensitize you to the beauty in this world. It would be great to go each morning before you begin your day. If you can’t, try to go a couple of times a week. If you still can’t, try to go at least on Friday, or, right before Shabbat. Don’t worry if you are not observant. All of us have Jewish souls, and those souls react the same way. To a spirit, immersing in a mikveh is a very empowering act. It fills the soul, and the body, with great amounts of energy. Don’t ever think that this is ‘too religious’ or something. You can find a mikveh in your area by going to http://mikvah.org/directory/. They cost about $2 or $3 per visit and they are open to the public.

Imagine trying to run a mile with a broken leg. You won’t get very far. Even if you do complete the mile, it will take you a long time. How much better will you run as your leg heals? Once it is out of a cast, you will be able to complete the mile and in a reasonable time. How much better will you run once your leg is completely healed? You will be able to run faster, and longer distances as well. This is exactly what it is like as you gradually take on more and more of the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit. The blemishes on your soul will continue to heal and the capacity your neshama has for the sake of doing more in the way of prayer, Torah learning, and acts of Hesed will significantly increase. You will see.

The mikveh is a significant part of the spiritual healing process.

When a soul enters the mikveh, it regains its alertness. A mikveh sensitizes you to everything, especially to the beauty in the world. We take for granted that there are so many physical wonders around us. We see a building, and are awestruck by its size. We don’t realize that in contrast to the vast sky, it is very small. We see cars, and telephones, and computers, but don’t stop for a second to look at the intricate veins that comprise a single leaf. At every moment, we are surrounded by awe-inspiring beauty. The skies stand above us, flowers bloom around us, birds fly hover around us. One of the most amazing things about a mikveh is that in strengthening your soul, you regain spiritual sensitivity to all of it!

This revelation overflows to many aspects of our life. In finding awareness in the beauty all around us, we re-discover a special intimacy with Hashem. When we look out our office windows and see the sky, clouds, birds, trees, even a body of water – we see how great Hashem’s creations are. Every physical object in the universe was made, and is constantly being made by Hashem. This is the RamBam’s first principle of the Jewish faith. Every object has a degree of spirituality invested in it.

In simply looking around us, we become keenly aware that at every moment Hashem is creating a spectacular symphony of beauty just for us! We uncover the revelation that not only does Hashem guide the trillions of stars in the cosmos, He personally oversees the breeze blowing on a single blade of grass. If Hashem is constantly watching over all the inanimate bodies in the world, how much more so with each of us!

What a happier life we can live with the knowledge that Hashem personally watches over us in everything that we do.

It’s one thing to read the words, it’s another to grasp this concept and allow it to impact your essence. Immerse in a mikveh and you will gain a deeper understanding of this Divine joy.

When you go to a mikveh, and awaken the spirituality that Hashem invested in you, you are reconnecting with the inherent spirituality all around you.

For example, I have been taking the Northern State Parkway all my life. From the time I was 17 years old, all I saw were cars: lots of them! The drive on that road would be full of pavement, drivers, and loud noise. Once I started going to the mikveh, something pretty unbelievable happened. I started to notice the beautiful things on the highway. I noticed that on both sides of the highway there was greenery. There was grass, squirrels, and birds. I began to notice that. In front of me, along with the 2,000 cars in front, there was a beautiful horizon right above. The picture was lovely. In the evening, I could see the clouds lit up in fiery orange as the sun set. Mind you, I am not talking about a beach off the coast of Venice. I am talking about the easily perceivable beauty on the Northern State Expressway during a traffic jam in rush hour! That is how powerful a mikveh is. This is the potential our neshamot have to perceive Hashem’s beauty in the world. If you are going to the mikveh for the first time, your spirit will be able to perceive many phenomena around you for the first time. Even sights you saw all your life will seem different. You will feel like everything in the world is new and wondrous. It’s like being a kid again.

Imagine how amazing it is when you take a parkway that goes over water, or by a beach. Seeing the sun reflect upon a lake, the clouds explode in the sky. It’s spectacular.

One should go to a mikveh if he has had a nocturnal emission. If one dreams about women, and doesn’t have an emission, he should still go to a mikveh. Evil forces appear to a man during his dreams in the form of women. You can destroy them by immersing in a mikveh. Over time, a mikveh will heal almost all spiritual blemishes. There are many different combinations of how many times you must totally immerse yourself. Immersing yourself means dunking your entire body in the water. When immersing, run your hand right above your head to make sure that all of your hair is under water. Have in mind the concept of tsuva and repenting for previous acts when going in the water. When you are in the water, the hundreds of thousands of souls that were captured by the shells of evil and constantly plague you, cannot do you any harm. Once you get out of the mikveh, many of them are killed off. The mikveh is one of the biggest tikkunim, or acts of tsuva that you can do to combat the sins of pgam habrit.

Try going to a mikveh.

All of them are kept clean. If you are not observant, don’t worry about being surrounded by observant Jews. It is a perfectly natural thing for a Jew to go to a mike and these men know that. Today, a big percentage of religious Jews are newly observant. If you encounter a religious man at a mikveh, it is very likely he started out non-observant and knows exactly what you are going through!. If you are a little squeamish about going when there are many people around you, go during the day. Most mikvehs are open from around 5AM to noon, but you can call them to find out for sure. This act is a very empowering act. It gives you tremendous energy to attack the day. It is a great opportunity to perform a tikkun on your soul, and to bring Holy sparks to all of Am Yisrael from the light your tsuva.

Prayer is a very powerful tsuva for the sins of pgam haBrit. The Shema is a very strong tikkun for the soul. When you feel as if you are being overcome with sexual thoughts, say the first two lines of the Shema. This is very good in helping you redirect your thoughts.

If you don’t pray every day, consider saying the Shema. It takes a few minutes and you can make it a part of your morning routine. If you can’t read Hebrew, read it in English. If you want to learn to read Hebrew, click here. It’s very easy and as you recite more and more of your prayers in Hebrew, you will feel stronger and more elevated. Don’t be concerned if you don’t know Hebrew at first. Many of the religious are newly observant. It would not surprise me is one out of every four Jews who pray quickly and intensely were exactly like me: when they were in their 20s, they couldn’t recite a paragraph of Hebrew in less than 20 minutes. We all go through this. It’s perfectly fine. In fact – it’s better than fine! After all, according to the exertion comes the reward.

The bedtime shema is one of the more difficult mitzvoth to perform because when you say it, you are dead tired and all you want to do is go to bed. It is very tempting to mumble it quickly and roll into bed. It is an even bigger temptation to, Hashem forbid, skip the prayer all together. This may sound a little extreme, but at 11:30 at night when you are consumed by exhaustion, those voices inside you that suggest you close your eyes for a couple of minutes and then recite the Shema sound very convincing. Believe me, at 11:30, you never rest your eyes for just 2 minutes! The difference between mumbling the shema quickly, and reciting it thoroughly is a matter of minutes. I suggest reciting an interlinear version and going over the English word before you recite the Hebrew word. It only takes a couple of minutes and you say this prayer with greater intensity. We are rewarded not merely by how many mitzvoth we do, but by the amount of effort we put in when doing them. To fight total exhaustion and recite the shema with focus and devotion is to really exert yourself for Hashem. It is your last opportunity of the day to strengthen the light of Hashem into the world.

Rabbi Nachman of Bretslov states that if one says Tikkun HaKlali and goes to a mike on the day after he has a nocturnal emission, he has nothing to worry about.

What is tikkun haklali?

Tikkun HaKlali means General Rectification. It is a series of ten psalms that is intended to rectify all of the sins in our life, specifically the sins of pgam habrit. These psalms have the ability to purify the soul on every level. Going back to my previous example about jogging with a broken leg. Once you start going to a mikveh, you are ‘spiritually’ repairing your leg and improving your ability to run.

Tikkun HaKlali has a similar effect. It is a great way to heal your soul. As you heal your spirit, you are able to truly realize what you are capable of.

Many medical researchers claim we utilize only 10% of our intellectual abilities. The Zohar states that every physical part of our bodies represents something about our soul.

This begs the question. What if we are only utilizing only 10% of our spiritual abilities?

The soul is the backbone of the will, and our determination to act defines the impact we make in this world. As we journey through our existence, how much life do we leave on the table?

The general rectification of Tikkun HaKlali consists of psalms are 16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, and 150. You will be amazed at the impact this daily reading will have on your life. If reading all 10 psalms is too much, try reading one or two a day. You can use an interlinear siddur and read them in Hebrew and in English. Understand what you are saying to Hashem in your prayers and mean it! One psalm with full focus and intent can be just as effective as 10 psalms said in haste just before you’re late for work.

When I started to learn the laws of Shmirat HaBrit, I began to recite the tikkun haklali every day. As I did this, everything in my life changed. I went from sleeping 8 hours a day to sleeping 6 hours a day. My mind was clearer, and I had more time in the morning for learning. Even at the end of an 18 hour day, I wasn’t tired at all. I thought it was all because I was adhering to the laws of shmirat habrit. It never occurred to me that a big part of it was the reciting of these psalms. I recited these psalms every day. After a while of this, I did what many people do after a big spiritual victory – I became complacent. I only recited these psalms a couple of times a week. Then I got outright lazy. I stopped reciting tehillim. Nothing happened immediately, but I started getting up a little later. One morning I would press the snooze button once, then the next morning, I would press it twice. The next thing I knew, I didn’t have enough time to learn in the morning. I got very frustrated. I figured that the one aspect of my daily life that had changed was the recital of these prayers. The next day I made sure to recite them. The day after that, I started to get up on time again. The Psalms of Tikkun HaKlali are powerful and they work. These psalms also perform a great tikkun for all of Am Yisrael.

The Torah states that every Jew can be like Moshe or Joshua.

That’s a pretty strong statement.

Moshe was the greatest prophet whom ever lived. He was the only man who spoke to Hashem face to face. He transmitted the Torah from Hahsem to the Jewish People. Yehoshua conquered the Land of Israel. He was Moshe’s student. The sea split for both of these men.

How can we be even compared to these great prophets, let alone told that we can be their equal? Moshe and Yehoshua set a great standard for every Jew to follow in that they realized their complete potential. All of the potential energy in heaven that Hashem made available to Moshe and Yehoshua, they utilized in this world to the fullest. The Torah is telling us that we have the same opportunity as them. With each positive act, and every tikkun, we take more energy from heaven and strengthen our souls in this world. With this energy our emotional, mental, and physical capabilities are enhanced. We go from using 2% of our souls, which enable us to exist, to using 4% or 5% of our souls, which enable us to make a difference in ourselves, the people we love, Am Yisrael, and the entire world. How do you think Moshe was able to go forty days without food or drink? What about those holy tzaddikim whom sleep only 2-3 hours per day? What about the Yeshiva students who learn for 18 hours straight? The soldiers of Jewish armies past who defeated legions of thousands with merely a platoon of a hundred men?

How did they accomplish these “superhuman” tasks?

They were all holy men. They strove to be like Moshe and Yehoshua by utilizing their full spiritual potential.

Men like Moses, Joshua, David, and Salomon are not simply characters in a story. They are our blood. They are Jews like us. They lived their lives under the same rules as we do. They could leap beyond their own selves to become the people they were put on this earth to be.

So can every one of us. In fact, this is the primary purpose of our existence.

Along with reciting different prayers to protect against the sin of pgam habrit, there are also kavanot, or intentions we can do during the already existing prayers. The Amidah is one of the central prayers of the daily prayer service. One of the prayers inside the Amidah is directly related to the tsuva for shmirat habrit. Part of the Amidah called the Kibbutz GaLooyot, or the prayer for the ingathering of the exiles. It is a prayer to Hashem that He end the Jewish exile and bring Jews from all over the world to the Land of Israel. On a deeper level, it is a prayer for all of the holy souls that we have sent into exile ourselves by the act of spilling seed. The prayer to bring home the exiles is not merely for all of us physically. Spiritually, it is for all of our children who we exiled to the forces of evil. We beseech Hashem to rescue them from their evil captives, and ingather them to their source.

It is important to remember that the first major exile from the Land of Israel was a direct result of our sexual sins. Recite this prayer with a focus on tsuva for your own actions, as well as for the actions of Am Yisrael as a whole. The prayer is very special and indicative of a Jewish prayer in that we don’t pray for ourselves, but for each other. The words of the prayer talk about all of our sins, not just our individual ones.

T’Kah B’Shofar GaDol L’Heirutaineu, Blow the great shofar for OUR freedom, V’sa nes l’kabaytz g’louyoteinu, raise a banner to gather OUR exiles, V’kabtzeinu yachad me’arba kanfot haaretz, and gather US TOGETHER from the four corners of the earth. Baruch Ata Hashem, Mekabaitz needchai amo Yisrael. Blessed are You Hashem, who gathers in the dispersed of His Nation Yisrael.

This prayer is a plea not only for yourself, but for all of your brothers and sisters, the Jewish People. When we ask Hashem to forgive our sins and to rectify their damage, we are asking that He do this for all of Israel. If we focus on rectifying all of our sins both individual and national, we are not only doing a tsuva for the sin that caused the first great exile, we are also doing a tsuva for the sin that caused the last great exile, the sin of baseless hatred. What can be a greater expression of love for your brothers and sisters that to ask Hashem to forgive them for their sins and to end their suffering?

2008-10-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

Part 16 – Focus you mind

Great is penitence for it brings healing to the world, and an individual who repents is forgiven, and the whole world is forgiven with him.

Talmud, Yoma 86A

It is illegal in the US to touch women if she doesn’t want to be touched. There are also laws which prevent a man from talking with a woman in an inappropriate manner. However, there are no criminal laws against looking at them. You are not physically making contact. Nor are you saying to her word one. Legally, you can glue your eyes to her as she walks by, drink in her physical appearance, and walk away without fear of an arrest or lawsuit. It may be legal according to the law of the land, but it isn’t according to the Torah. This is a big sin. Looking at a woman’s beauty creates seed in the brain, which seeps down the spine, and rests in ones bowels until it is spilled out. This built up seed can be expelled through a dream, after urination, or from masturbation – May Hashem forgive us!

Admittedly, this sin is very difficult for our generation. There is intense social pressure for a woman to show off as much of her physical appearance as possible. There are no mores that suggest a female cover up anything anymore. For a man, simply walking on the street invites a lot of visual temptation that is very difficult to overcome. This temptation is compounded with thousands of billboards all around us with pictures of inviting women. You can’t look at a storefront, newsstand, or bus without having to combat the desire to stare at the advertisement. Television is especially hard because even the shows “rated G” have women who may not be totally revealing in what they wear, but are suggestive in how they present themselves. This makes the challenge of shmirat ainayim, or, guarding the eyes, a very formidable one.

With all of this imagery around us, what do we do?

There is a great tikkun for this. Look at the tip of your nose. When you are walking by and you sense something attractive walking towards you. As much as you want look up – try resisting it. So what if you miss seeing the image. So what if you never get to see what this person looks like. Look to the left, look up, look at the tip of your nose. As long as you consciously try to focus on anything else, you are doing a great act of tsuva. According to the exertion is the reward for the mitzvah. In those few moments, you are significantly affecting all of the spiritual worlds all around us. Not bad for five seconds of work. This is one of the most amazing spiritual opportunities we have in this world. We can do so much in such a short period of time. We can exert ourselves and bring down masses of Divine Light for neshamot and our brothers and sisters HUNDREDS OF TIMES PER DAY! By putting on a baseball cap, and looking at the rim of the cap every time we want to stare at something, we can turn the subway into a Yeshiva with the amount of mitzvoth we can perform in just our morning commute!

Cleaning your home and guarding your eyes amounts to about 93% of all the temptations you face. The final step is the hardest. The ultimate battle for sexual morality is in the mind. The greatest challenge is to push back images of sex inside our heads.

You must be saying to yourself – How on earth can I accomplish that?

At least with one’s eyes, you can physically control what you see. With the TV, internet, and magazines, you have the ability to throw them out. We can physically eliminate over 90% of the temptations in our immediate surroundings.

This cannot be done with the mind.

In the words of Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi of Divine Inspiration, the human mind has over 10 trillion electrical connections to it. The dumbest man on the planet has a more sophisticated piece of hardware inside his head than the most complicated intercontinental telecommunications network.

Any image you see is burned in the mind – you never lose it. You can’t get rid of porn in your mind. Once you put it there, it’s there forever. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for man to fanaticize about something he saw 20 or 30 years ago.

You can’t erase it, but you can refocus it. The most important thing you need to know is something I learned at a shiur on Torah Anytime:

THE MIND CAN ONLY FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME!

Remember this every time you start fantasizing about something inappropriate and you want to stop.

As long as you can think of another topic, your mind will divert away from that place of mental impurity.

Easier said than done, right?

Even if you consciously focus on business, politics, or on a Torah subject you learned, the fantasy is in the background of your mind. It is constantly at the door of your mind – pounding on it to get inside.

This is where the battle lies. The longer you focus on something else, the more the immoral fantasy will drift away in to the far recesses of your mind. Don’t be upset if the fantasies pop back into your head after a couple of minutes. The Satan tries to hit you when you least expect it. Some of these images are of your own doing. You will see something, and follow up those images with impure imagination. Sometimes these erotic sequences are not engaged by you. Your yetzer hara started it. The Satan was commissioned by Hashem to bring us to sin. Only in being tempted like this can we do a great tsuva and heal the world. According to the exertion is the reward. To control one’s mind is the ultimate exertion – especially in our generation. Do you realize how revolutionary this concept is? It means we don’t have to raise money, petition our congressman, or storm al-qaeda’s headquarters to change the world.

We can make the world a better place for everybody without even lifting a finger!

The Rambam states that a very big tsuva for a past sin is when we are put in the exact same situation where when we sinned, but this time we overcame the temptation.

There are so many sins that come from niuf (sexual fantasies).

How many of us start with niuf and end up masturbating?

How many of us start with niuf and end up watching porn?

How many of us start with niuf and end up at a strip club, massage parlor, or brothel?

Sexual thoughts are always entering our minds. If we can combat them, we are performing tsuva not only for the times we fantasized, but for all the actions that resulted from them.

It all starts with the mind – so let’s end it there!

It is best to always replace a thought with another thought. Try carrying a magazine or a book around. Whenever you start thinking impure thoughts, immediately recite the first two verses of the Shema – do it verbally or mentally. Then find a good article, whether it is Torah, politics, business, or sports, and start reading.

Every time you knock a sexual thought out of your mind you make a big impact on all of the spiritual worlds.

Once you have gotten to the level of annihilating temptation from your physical and mental worlds, you need to hold where you are. This is hard at first, but it will not remain impossible forever. The Satan will launch a counterattack. As you begin to raise your level of connection to Hashem, it will be very challenging. The Satan will fire at you by saying ‘Hey, you think you can hold this up forever? Can you really lift a 200 pound weight and keep it above your shoulders for all eternity?’ These moments will come. After you have won many victories against your lesser parts, you will see a drop dead gorgeous woman. Every impulse inside you will want her. By the time the moment arrives when you remind yourself that you no longer engage in the acts you are planning with her, you may realize how truly difficult remaining Shmirat HaBrit is. You may say to yourself that even if you find the strength to win this time, there is no way you can keep up this persistence forever.

There will be moments where you ask yourself ‘can I really do this? Can I really keep the 200 pound weight above my shoulders for all time?’

The answer is YES. Guarding the Brit isn’t about keeping a 200 pound weight above you forever. It is more like running 5 miles every day. The first couple of times you do it, you feel like it is the hardest thing you have ever done. When you are, you don’t think you can possibly do it again. The next time you go out, the runs seem less intense. After running 5 miles a day for 3 weeks, the challenge becomes easy. The run even feels pleasurable. By six weeks, it’s like a walk in the park. For Shmirat Habrit, the process is much the same. If there is a specific act that you want to refrain from, the first 40 days will be the hardest. It takes 40 days to fall into a good habit. Those are the days where the five miles will be extremely difficult. As time moves on, you get stronger and stronger.

Once the forty days are up, you have significantly distanced yourself from the act, and you will have amassed enough strength where staying away from a certain behavior will seem like a walk in the park. When the yetzer hara attacks with the excuse that you can’t keep this up forever, just remember that you don’t have to.

Just hang in for a little while and it will get more manageable. The Talmud teaches, “A man has a small organ – when it is starved, it is satisfied; when it is fed, it is hungry”

Every day will be a battle for the holiness of your eyes and your mind, and for all of Israel. Every day is also the opportunity for hundreds of victories for the forces of Hashem and His people. The Talmud tells us (Yoma 86A):

“Great is penitence for it brings healing to the world, and an individual who repents is forgiven, and the whole world is forgiven with him”

What happens when we fall down?

What happens when we clean up our homes, our eyes, and our minds. Very quickly, everything in our life becomes unbelievably better. We sleep less, we are more focused, and when we pray, we feel an intimacy with Hashem we never felt before. We find an inner joy we never knew existed. We are so happy, we thank Hashem every day for the joy of living.

And we still fall down? We still succumb to temptation?

What do we do?

For starters – we don’t give up. We figure out where we went wrong, what we need to fix, and get right back onto the battlefield. The greatest victory the Satan enjoys against the Jewish People is depression. The absolute worst thing any of us can do is to feel that all is lost.

It would be ideal if the path to redemption was like an elevator straight to heaven. Jewish history tells us that it just isn’t so. It would be wonderful to claim that the greatest Jews in the world never fell themselves. The Torah teaches us that out of the billions and billions of people who roamed the earth over the history of mankind, the total number of people that lived their entire lives and never committed a sin is four.

Everybody falls down. The great ones are those who get up every single time.

Every time you take a step towards Hashem, the forces of evil will double their efforts to stop you. As soon as you get comfortable with a mitzvah, and the Satan will launch a major counter offensive against you. You will be tested in every which way. Don’t be surprised if, in the process of stopping forbidden emissions, you have more ‘wet dreams’. This will go away. The sexual urge is the greatest one we have, and resisting it is the greatest challenge in our lifetimes. When you keep this mitzvah, you are winning the ultimate cosmic battle between good and evil. You are successfully resisting the desire for self gratification, and you are deflating your ego and literally sacrificing it to Hashem.

If we do tsuva, and then fall again, can we still do another tsuva? Will it be accepted? Do we get another chance?

The answer lies with King David. King David led an exemplary life. He was one of the few Jewish leaders who was a king, and a prophet. Despite the greatness of creating the first Jewish empire, he was the most humble of men. He feared his wealth because he didn’t want to receive all of the benefits of his righteousness in this world, but in the next. He allowed himself to be publicly reproached by Jewish Holy men, the prophets of his day. He made sure that the law of the land was not his law, but Hashem’s law – the law of the Torah. He was destined to build a Temple in Jerusalem where the Mishkan would permanently stand and the Jewish people would be able to perform hundreds of the 613 mitzvot in the Holy City.

Then he met Bat Sheva.

He saw her from a distance and like all of us, fell victim to a massive onslaught from the forces of evil. Even King David, who was the greatest, couldn’t resist this temptation. He had Bat Sheva’s husband sent to the front lines of battle to be killed. Once he was out of the picture, King David married Bat Sheva. The prophet Natan publicly criticized King David for sinning in such a matter. What would happen today if a national leader was accused of something like this? First, he would deny it. Then, he would find out how to humiliate the accuser with whatever personal information the leader could dig up about the person’s past. If that didn’t work, he would cut as many political deals as necessary to stay in power – even if those deals were at the expense of the welfare of his nation. King David was above all this. Instead of rebuking Natan King David remained true to his great humility. He publically admitted that he sinned against the Lord. This sin of sexual immorality created a stain on King David’s soul. He was punished in the worst way possible. He was forbidden from building the Temple. He would not be able to realize the ultimate dream of the Jewish people.

King David was a man who always worked on himself. He dedicated his life to coming close to Hashem. After he reached the level of national monarch and divine prophet, he fell down. He committed a sin and was punished for it.

Did he stop learning Torah? Did he give up all hope? Did he feel that he was no longer “Holy enough?” to pray and learn because he was now a “hypocrite?”

Just the opposite. He got right up off the floor and began doing tsuva for his actions. He spent the rest of his life atoning for that sin. This is the exact type of sin that we commit all the time. How often do we lie, cheat, and manipulate others to get what we want from them? How many people have suffered from our pursuit of sexual desires? The girl who wants endlessly for a phone call that will never come. The woman who has given up all hope of finding someone because the men only go out with her for a month. The poor soul who is forced into prostitution against her will because there is such a demand for it. The consequences of our actions show the ultimate result of what happens. Like King David, we can conquer Jerusalem, but we can’t build it.

Is there ever atonement? If we refuse to quit, and always struggle for tsuva, will it be fully accepted?

The product of King David’s marriage to Batsheva was his son Solomon. Of all of David’s wives, the successor to the throne would come from the very wife with which King David sinned. The tsuva he performed was so great that it would be King Solomon, son of David and Bat Sheva, who would build our Holy Beit Mikdash. We learn that if you fall, your tsuva can bring you even higher. This story is so important. You see, Solomon had a brother, Caleev. Caleev, was one of the only four men in all of mankind that never sinned in their lifetime. Why didn’t Caleev succeed his father David? Why didn’t Solomon step aside? Why wasn’t it the merit of a man who never sinned in his lifetime instead of Salomon who would build the Temple and to reign over the greatest era in Jewish history? What is history telling us? What does Hashem want us to learn?

In the place where the penitent stand, even the completely righteous are not able to stand.

This is how powerful Tsuva is!

To regret your past actions and actively try to improve yourself. To fall down, and to them get back up. To never say, “This is too holy for me. I’m not worthy to do this.” To not fall into despair and surrender to a life of mediocrity. This is tsuva. This is David ben Yishai. This is Solomon. This is US! The challenge to conquer sin is so great, the light we bring into the world is SO BRIGHT, that not even the completely righteous can attain it. We, sons of David, are here to fulfill this mission.

2008-10-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

Part 15 – The Internet

Serving Hashem comes from the heart. The heart is the seat of a man’s desire. The heart is at the core of our deepest passions. The Jewish heart is driven like no other nation on earth. We are driven with more natural passion than anyone else. A man can be intensely passionate about serving his King in Heaven. He can dedicate his entire life to loving Hashem with all of his heart, and all of his soul, and all of his strength. This passion, unfortunately, goes in whatever direction we turn it. The most passionate Greeks, Romans, and idolaters, were, regretfully, also Jews.

It all begins with the heart. Our lives are a reflection of where we focus our passions. Do we live like animals, or do we push ourselves? Do we restrain our want for the physical in order to unleash our true potential, or do we pass our existence in this world trapped in our own shells?

We can meditate on this right before we say the Shema. We can ask Hashem, in our hearts and our minds, or with our mouths, for the strength to resist these temptations every day. Our prayer can focus on how badly we want to serve Him. It is an excellent opportunity to do some powerful tsuva and we can do it every day.

Before we pray, we can talk to G-d. It is called hitbodedute. G-d wants to hear our prayers. He wants us to know that He is here with us in everything we do – even in the small matters.

Our greatest sages would talk to G-d the way they spoke to people. They would tell Hashem their goals. They would reveal to Hashem their fears. They would express to Hashem their love for Him.

We can ask G-d for the strength to serve Him. We can ask for help in overcoming temptation. We can ask to become partners with Him in making the world a better place – better for our families, better for all of Israel, better for everybody.

I have a secret.

The first time I learned about the consequences of sexual misconduct, all I could do was think to myself, ‘uh oh – I am in real trouble!’ The sins I am guilty of aren’t light ones, and neither are the punishments.

If you have the same history of sexual behavior as me, you are probably thinking the same thing – we are in big trouble.

The good news is that we can all do tsuva. The good news is that there are a great number of ways we can correct our actions and connect to the mass amounts of spiritual and physical energy Hashem preserved for each of us in fixing ourselves. Because we have fallen so far, the amount of light we can bring into the world through tsuva is immense and maybe even unprecedented.

The Talmud, in Berachot 34B states: ‘Where penitents stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.’

Rabbi Nachman states that the further a person is away from Hashem, the more enjoyment Hashem derives from the actions he takes to get back to Him. A person who grew up in an area where Shmirat HaBrit is taught constantly, and the laws of modesty are kept, has fewer temptations. It is relatively easier to keep the laws of Shmirat HaBrit.

What about everyone else? We are seeped in impurity. Even if we set aside time for prayer and learning, no one can turn on a TV, go on the internet, or drive more than 200 yards without seeing a half naked woman in an inviting pose. You can’t even go from the entrance to the building you work in to your office without passing a woman who is seductively dressed. Temptation and impurities are not even seen as negative anymore. We are all encouraged by our workmates, our friends, family, and TV celebrities, to go out and get, well . . . .get some. We are no longer encouraged by doing what’s right. We get heaps of praise by doing wrong!

Why should we be judged by the same standard as the guy studying Torah in Yeshiva who lives in an area where everyone is modestly dressed?

The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that the greatest sources of Divine Light are hidden behind the most intense concentrations of darkness. Today, we all live among the deepest recesses of darkness. The world that surrounds us is built for sin. It is made for us to fall thousands of times and to remain obsessed with flesh and all physical pleasures. We are literally in the belly of the beast. This gives us an opportunity to fight a greater demon than ever before. This gives us all the opportunity to pull the greatest sources of light into the open with our daily struggles. The truth is that we are in a position to perform tsuvas that are tougher to perform than almost any Jew can.

Every tikkun we do, every tsuva we perform, every time we struggle with our physical selves to look the other way when a gorgeous woman passes by -- we are taking on the whole world. The moment we turn around and decide to go against the grain of the entire world, we are no longer deep into the abyss, looking down into the dark. We are at the bottom of it, looking up into the distant light.

This is the power of tsuva.

Rabbi Akiva was not religious for the first 40 years of his life. He was keenly aware of the physical joys around him. Even as he lived as a Torah Jew, those urges within him were very strong. He had to fight these urges within himself, tooth and nail, all of his life. We are also engaged in the same battle. Even as we grow old and the organs begin to wither, the urges stay there. The mind can remain as sharp as ever – for good, and for bad. Someone who was born a tzaddik, who maintains the very foundations of the earth itself, will not have to fight these battles. The great, great, men who grow up in areas of great Jewish modesty, will not have to fight constant sexual urges like we do. They haven’t experienced the sensual pleasure of the flesh, and won’t have to fight against the constant urge to re-live it.

This is why those who do tsuva have the opportunity to stand higher than those who are perfectly righteous.

No matter how many times you have sinned, you can still make a big difference. Never are you in any way, shape, or form, ‘unworthy’ to correct yourself. Don’t give up while you still sin while engaged in battle. You can study the laws of Shmirat HaBrit, and grow spiritually, do more and more tsuva, bring amazing beams of light unto the world, and then fall. This process can repeat itself again, and again, and again. It’s all right.

You can still do tsuva.

This is something which Hashem gets great pleasure from. It is the joy a father gets when he sees his infant child try to walk. As many times as the infant falls, he continues to get up and try again.

This is the primary purpose of existence!

Do you know that the Jewish faith believes in reincarnation? To say we believe in reincarnation is a big understatement. Reincarnation is an integral part of the Jewish existence.

We live imperfect lives, all the while striving for perfection. Hashem loves us. He wants us to pass all the tests in our life so when we die, we can merit the highest levels in the Next World.

That is why He gives us opportunities. If we fall short of certain mitzvoth in our lifetimes, our soul is reincarnated into another life. The main task of that life is to make corrections for the shortcomings of the previous life; to perform those mitzvoth we failed to do in the past so we can be judged more favorably in the future.

(This is not an excuse to be complacent. Never put off making tsuva with the self-justification that you will simply try again in your next life. Supernatural success is to reach a higher closeness with Hashem, making a ‘next life’ unnecessary. Upon death, the soul separates from the body. This can be a very painful process. Reincarnation guaranteed that this trauma will be repeated. You can also be reincarnated into someone or something not pleasant. It is important to pray, learn Torah, and to ask Hashem what our soul correction is in this world. Once we find out – start working on it without delay!)

The point is that Hashem desires us to grow. Even over the course of several lifetimes, especially over the course of this lifetime, Hashem wants us to do tsuva. He wants us to overcome obstacles in life so we can get stronger. He wants us to taste victory long enough so we can face even bigger obstacles.

He is patient with us every time we fall down. He wants to forgive us for all of our sins – as long as we resolve to get up.

Is this really possible? Can any of us really give up sex? Can we stop going to the bars, checking out women, flirting. Can this really be done?

It’s being done already. Thousands of Jews in the Land of Israel as well as in the United States and all over the world hold the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit. Many of these people are single. Many of them work in offices, live in cities, and stand up to the western world.

But Dave, are you for real? Give up all forms of sex, forever?

Nobody is giving up all forms of sex for the rest of their lives. Celibacy is a sin. You are sinning against the First Commandment G-d gave Adam. Adam, and all of the generations that followed, are Commanded to procreate, or at least try. Even not satisfying your wife is a sin. If a husband does not satisfy his wife in this area – she can divorce him. This comes directly from the Talmud. It is an unholy thing to go your entire life without ever having sex. The biggest trap we fall into is letting ourselves be convinced that sexual morality has something to do with abstinence or celibacy.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

So, how do we start to correct ourselves? What’s the first step?

The first step is to learn. Don’t do anything yet – just learn. As you learn more and more, you begin to internalize that sexual morality is all about receiving greater spiritual energy at every moment. It isn’t about what you are giving up, it is about what you are receiving. This is a very powerful mitzvah and you will feel the effects of it very quickly. The benefits are so energizing and revitalizing that you will quickly feel them.

Once you are ready to move from learning to making some lifestyle changes, it’s time to take the next step. This step is 80% of the battle. If you can do this, you are mostly there. The next step is to clean out your home of all inviting materials. With addiction, admitting you have a problem is 50% of the battle. In this case, getting rid of all temptation within the home is the key to defeating inner demons. We are most vulnerable to doing something inappropriate when we are alone. We are mostly alone when we are at home. If we can clean out our homes of temptations, we are in a very good place. When you are ready, you need to get all the magazines you are stacking away somewhere and throw them in the garbage. Don’t rationalize the money you spent on them. Don’t try to say to yourself that you will put them in a place where you won’t be able to get to them. Just throw them out. As embarrassed as I am to admit this, I know that if you want to get to sexual material bad enough, no amount of locks can stand between you. When we get that desire to satisfy ourselves, the energy we have to break the locks or find the magazines far exceeds the energy we have in hiding them. If you don’t trash these things, you will use them again. All posters of women also need to go. The next step is the videos. Any videos you have need to go into the trash. Again, don’t be concerned about their monetary value. Don’t try to sell them on eBay or something because while you are selling them, they are in your possession and you will use them. Just chuck em in the trash. I would suggest getting rid of cable. It is as easy as a click to view porn on cable. I would suggest trying to keep those channels off your TV if possible. If a new on-demand movie is that important to watch, go to Blockbuster and rent it. If a sporting event is so important, go to a friend’s house. I am not telling you to take a bat to your television set, just limit yourself to those channels that have no age restrictions.

Even those channels are suspect. I am not trying to be extreme, just careful. Recently, I saw an episode of Law & Order on a channel I thought was for everybody. One of the commercials that aired during the show was for a local strip club. All it took was an instant and I was overcome with a thousand urges to do something I shouldn’t. I was fortunate. I saw this commercial after striving to be Shmirat HaBrit for 2 years. I was able to control myself. Has I seen this commercial years earlier, I would have acted on these urges that rushed to the surface the moment the commercial hit the TV screen. For all of us who are beginning this wonderful soul correction, be very careful. All it takes is one image and in an instant our animal side takes over and we spend the next hour in an aggressive pursuit of something unholy. It is very important to be careful about what we watch on TV – and when we watch it. The TV is designed to entertain us when we are all alone. The problem is that we are most vulnerable to committing these sins when we are all alone. The one activity we do more than anything else when we are alone is to watch TV.

The last step in cleaning out your home is by far the most important one. You need to sanitize your internet. May Hashem forgive me for saying this, but I have seen people from all walks of life use porn on the internet. Representatives of every facet of Jewish life have complained of internet porn infecting their communities. Families are destroyed because individuals prefer the fantasies on the internet to their spouses. This is the worst temptation of our generation. It is estimated that almost 50% of the internet is porn. Internet porn generates more money than the combined revenues of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. There is only one solution, you have to install a web filter. You have to install more than one. There is no other way. A good web filter will keep out the bad sites, and allow you to use the internet for productive purposes. They will successfully differentiate between a news site and a site with similar words, but offensive content. Even if you get blocked out of longtime sites that you use, it’s okay. Many web filters have a function where you can petition them to unblock a site. When I was doing research for my honeymoon, I was blocked from a website about visiting Kibbutz Wineries. The reason given was that it was a site too closely related to alcohol. When I hit the override function, the web filter administrators checked the site, determined that it wasn’t inappropriate, and unblocked it. The danger of installing a web filter is that you have total control over it. At a bad moment, you can uninstall the web filter, or even manually override all blocks. What you need to do in order to make Kosher your internet is to ask someone else to install it for you. My favorite web filter is called K9 Web Protection. It is free. If you walked away for ten minutes while your friend installed it, and used his email for the account, or even set up a temporary email address on yahoo that you couldn’t access your password, your internet would be safe from porn. As much as I am embarrassed to admit this, I know that when you are alone on the internet and you want to see something, you will do everything in your power to do it. I have heard that the biggest danger of the internet is the fact that most of us surf alone. We tend to be more permissive about our behavior when we fell like nobody is watching. How many of us spend time surfing porn only to quickly hit the X box the moment we hear a door opening?

Many Rabbis have instructed their communities never to use the internet alone. As long as someone else is in the room, it’s relatively safe. This is another way to protect yourself from the dangers of the internet. Give total access to your computer to your wife. Along with adding extra incentive to surf the net in a Kosher manner, you will earn bonus points with the misses!

Taking these steps are a true victory against the satan, his yetzer hara, and the forces of evil. You are bringing to the world a tremendous light simply in rearranging the foundation of your life to serve Hashem. Remember in the Shema? B’shivtecha B’beitecha! Hashem commands us to serve Him in our homes. Could there be a more effective way to fulfill this mitzvah then to clense our homes of impurity? We have established the fact that spilling seed is like spilling your soul onto the ground. You are sucking the energy out of your body and becoming a mere fraction of the person you’re supposed to be. In merely taking away the opportunities to sin in the future, you are guaranteeing that your soul will keep more and more of its strength. You are guaranteeing that your life will be filled with so much more spiritual and physical joy. For every moment you are at home, you are putting the chances of you being holy in YOUR favor! You are sanctifying your home! You are re-dedicating it to HaKadosh Baruch Hu!

Once this is carried out, we should do an accounting. By now, about 90% of our physical lives have been reduced of temptation. Where do we spend 90% of our time? Either at home or at work. At work nobody who wants to stay employed uses any form of porn or even sexually implicit material. When we clear our homes of the same material, we are clearing 90% of our lives of this garbage. The remaining 10% is going to be tough, but at least we put the odds in our favor.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s daily market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a weekly review of the major articles published around the world. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, and tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!

2008-10-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

Part 14 – The Shema

Another way we can fight the temptations of pgam habrit, and strengthen our determination to be Holy is to recite the Shema each day.

The Shema? Isn’t this prayer recited for more lofty reasons?

The Shema is the core belief in the Jewish faith. It is our national mission statement. We can dissect this prayer and find out how Hashem communicates to us this He wants from our service of Him.

It is also a mitzvah to recite the Shema twice per day. This gives us a tremendous opportunity. In purchasing an interlinear copy of the Shema, we can accomplish many things. First, we can fulfill the obligation to say the Shema twice a day. It only takes a few minutes to perform this mitzvah. Second, in reciting the interlinear version, we can go over each word and understand its English meaning. Praying in Hebrew is a life-transforming experience. It is using the Holy language to serve our Creator. To pray in Hebrew, while understanding what you are saying with the translation right in front of you is like talking directly to Hashem. It is an unbelievable way to fulfill this mitzvah. In going over what we are saying, we can gain a deeper understanding of what the Shema is. We can fully grasp what we are communicating to Hashem on a daily basis, and what He is communicating to us.

Rabbi Tovia Singer told a very eye-opening story about the Shema. Rabbi Singer dedicates his life to dealing with Jews who have become Christians. He finds people who have fallen under the sway of the missionaries and tries to get them as excited about their own faith. He got a call one day from some frantic parents. They told him that their daughter converted to Christianity while she was away at college. Undeterred by this challenge, Rabbi Singer went to the college and set up a meeting with the girl. He asked her why she chooses to give up her religion.

She told him that there was a great beauty in Christianity that Judaism lacked. She told the Rabbi that there is such a yearning for G-d in her newfound faith that she never found before in Judaism.

Rabbi Singer, who had years of experience in dealing with this exact situation, knew exactly what to do. He asked her to give an example of the beauty of Christianity.

The girl quoted a passage from the Book of Deuteronomy:

And you shall love your G-d with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your might.

Rabbi Singer smiled. He took out the Hebrew translation of the very words the girl had spoken and asked her to read them. To her surprise, she was reading the first paragraph of the Shema. This was a very passionate and spiritual young woman who was thirsting for something. Rabbi Singer knew that her thirst could only be truly quenched by the faith that Hashem had blessed her with and none other.

The same applies to all of us. With all the talk about the ‘situation in the Middle East,’ we begin to see Judaism solely as a political religion. With so many Jews as leaders of political parties, social movements, and charity organizations, we see Judaism for its ‘social change’ side. In doing so, we forget that primarily, Judaism is a religion of the soul. Our spiritual side is the most warm, energetic, and full than any other on earth. In reading the Shema, a Jew is no longer a player in Middle East politics, nor is he a campaign chief for the next candidate for public office. He is a man with a soul that yearns for its Heavenly Source.

In going over the lines of the Shema, step by step, we scratch the surface of our own spirituality and reveal the true wonders of our existence.

The first two lines tell us the basic underlying truth about what it means to be a Jew.

Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d, The Lord is One. Blessed is the Great Name of His Kingdom forever.

The G-d of the Universe is the G-d of Israel. He is One and Only. This means that the entire world emanates from Him. In the second line we are stating that Hashem is our King. While we follow the laws of the land and the dictates of the president of the united states, we follow, first and foremost, the laws of our true Chief Executive – our G-d, the King of the Universe. We are stating that we subordinate our will to His and subject our thoughts and actions according to the laws that He set forth for us to follow – namely The Torah.

It’s easier said than done. Accepting G-d’s existence in the world is a very frightening thing. You are saying that you cannot do as you please. You are saying that there is Someone watching you at all times. You are saying that the way you live your life isn’t perfect and that there is always opportunities to improve oneself. While others are cheating on their taxes, getting sloshed at the bar, or talking about who annoys them the most, you are having second thoughts. If G-d exists, and is King, then all the laws of the Torah have to be true. If all of the laws of the Torah are true, then I have to reconsider every action I take. Proclaiming Hashem King of the Universe is no simple task. Even if we are not at the level of holding all the laws in the Torah, just to anoint G-d as King over us states that there is an ultimate aim in our lives that we are striving to achieve.

I am a Hozer B’Tsuva, or returnee to the faith. I spent years learning to recite the Shema in Hebrew and in becoming comfortable in reciting it with ease and quickness. In all the years I read the Shema, there were very few times I actually made the effort to understand what I was saying. Once I got the interlinear translation, and began to recite each Hebrew word while looking at the English to find out what I was saying, the power of my prayers were revitalized my prayers in the most unbelievable fashion. I went from closing my eyes and feeling the connection of my soul to Hashem’s Will, to actually looking Hashem in the eye, face to face, and screaming at the top of my lungs: I love You! I prefer to pray in Hebrew. I think most people do, even if they don’t understand the words. The words of our daily prayers, which include parts of the written Torah, Psalms, and the Amidah, are so powerful. If you don’t know Hebrew, or can only read the letters, it is worth the effort to read the prayers in English when you have some time. Just to get a feeling of what you are saying. I would even go so far as to suggest that one read the Shema in English first and keep in mind some of the concepts he just read when he recites the Shema in Hebrew.

It does take a little longer to recite the prayers, but you get so much more out of it. You slowly read a word of Hebrew while quickly glancing at the English to understand what you are saying. In your mind, you can scream out the words to Hashem with full knowledge of what you are saying. It adds to the connection to Hashem, as well as to the intensity of your prayers. I know first-hand what it is like to pray quickly and for the prayers to become stale. I thought to myself: if I was going to give 20 minutes of my day to prayer regardless of how I decided to pray, why not make totally sure that I was getting the most out of it? I was told that praying fewer prayers with understanding of what you were saying, with stronger intent, and more passionate intensity was more effective than reading faster and getting only the accomplishment of Davening the whole service. There is so much more we can all experience in the same amount of the time we set aside for our daily prayers.

The Shema is a very powerful prayer. It is exciting, scary, and comforting. It all comes directly from the Torah. The first paragraph comes from the Book of Devarim, Chapter 6. It starts with the commandment to love Hashem. The first line, which we just mentioned says “And you shall love Hashem, your G-d, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all of your strength.”

In order to truly fight and defeat the forces of impurity, we have to keep sexual acts, words, and thoughts out of our reality. In order to do this, we will have to exert ourselves using all of our hearts, our souls, and our strength. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could end our day and say the bedtime Shema with satisfaction of saying to Hashem that we performed this mitzvah all day long? This commandment is a big challenge to all of us, and also a wonderful opportunity to serve our King in Heaven.

“and these matters that I command you today should be upon your heart.”

This can be a reference to meeting the day with a pure heart – free from internalizing temptation. In the morning, we affirm our commitment to staying the course of purity, when we say the Shema at night, among the benefits of this prayer is that it is a good defense against a nocturnal emission. We will wake up and go to bed with purity and keep our souls clean to receive Kedusha from Hashem.

“Teach them to your children and speak of them while you sit at your home”.

The sin of sexual immorality is one that children are also guilty of if they commit it, even if they are not of the age of bar mitzvah. Ignorance is not a defense for this sin – you still have to bear the consequences of your actions whether you are young or old, or whether you know about these laws or not. It is important to educate our children about these matters so that they know what not to do and how to resist the temptations of the world. Obviously, educating children in any subject requires a great degree of care, patience, and tact. With a subject like this, it is important to know what to teach at different stages in a boy’s life. We should definitely consult a Rabbi or Torah Scholar in how to go about educating our children in these matters – but we must also make sure to do it. It is just as important to keep the computers in a public room, and not let anybody access the internet while alone. Installing internet filters on all computers are essential.

The last part of the line – “speak of them when you are at home”, can also mean that we must set an example for our children. The best way to teach our children the proper path in life is to set an example for them with our own behavior. If we make crude jokes, or laugh at them, we are giving an implicit permission for our kids to do the same. Unless we make a special effort not to talk about these matters in front of them, and express disapproval towards our kids when they do, we are risking the spiritual and emotional welfare of our children. Leading by example is the best way to educate a child. It is critical to make sure your kids are not misusing the internet. Get internet filters, check your children’s internet history, and set specific times when they can use it. Always be in the room or have someone there when your kids are online. Many Rabbis today have decreed that it is against Jewish law to be alone when you are using the internet. Spiritually, giving a child free reign to use the internet is like giving him free reign to use a chainsaw. It is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Along with meeting virtual and real predators online, the content on most of the websites are spiritually devastating to a child. We love our children and will do anything to keep them out of anything dangerous.

“while you walk on the way, when you lie down, and when you arise.” This verse could not have more meaning than in this generation. Adding a double meaning to the previous line, “when you are at home” implies that we must exert ourselves to avoid staring at women or thinking about them. Thinking about women and staring at woman are both one sided acts. You don’t need permission to think about a woman. While you may get a nasty look by the person, and as long as you are not stalking somebody, you also don’t need permission to look at someone else. These are both acts that you can perform at will. So, in order to prevent yourself from committing these sins, you have to individually restrain yourself. That’s what the first paragraph is talking about – individual acts that one must do in order to properly serve Hashem. In the home can also refer to the temptations of the internet and TV, or other potential sources of impurity that encourage sin in the home. You can get an internet filter downloaded to your computer for free, the site is http://www.k9webprotection.com/. You can trash any graphic materials in your home. You can make your house Holy in regards to purging it of anything sexually immoral and also protect the spiritual welfare of not only yourself, but of any other people living in your home – especially your children.

“When you walk on the way.” You can be Haredi, secular, modern orthodox, or a Kollel student. If you walk outside, you are subject to the temptations of immodestly dressed women. Even if you are in the Holy Land there is temptation everywhere. Whether you are in Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, every time you walk from point A to point B and there is usually a woman who is dressed in a manner to convince you to dart your eyes at her. How many ignorant European’s go to the Old City in Jerusalem and forget how to dress? Do you realize the potential for spiritual damage when a man studies Torah for 10 hours straight, and then goes out to his dorm across the street to buy a coffee or walk to the Kotel and a woman in a belly shirt walks by?

When the European leaders of the world try to weaken Israel with their policies, their woman weaken our strength with their harlotry. Even in religious areas like Crown Heights or Borough Park there are challenges. In just the journey from the lobby to your office at work, there are women dressed in business attire that also have cleverly fitted themselves in such a way as to display themselves. Wherever you go, whomever you are, when you “walk on the way”, you always need to be very careful to focus on what’s important. You will be tested. Remember that you can look at the top of your nose, or a signpost just above, or anywhere else and resist this temptation. Looking at ones nose in the office is probably best as it doesn’t attract undue attention to oneself. According to the Zohar (taken from a CD lecture by Rabbi Lazer Brody), when you resist the urge to stare at a woman, thousands of angles in heaven praise you. Your image is transported to the loftiest heights of all the upper worlds and you are placed next to the greatest sages and tzaddikim of all time.

“when you get up, and when you lie down” the first thing we do when we get up is wash our hands. Sleep brings on a small impurity to all of us. Upon waking up, we want to be as pure as we can when embracing the day, this applies to all impurities. When you lie down, is an important part. As we discussed before, once you go to sleep, you have very little, if any, control over yourself. If you haven’t been able to resist the temptation of not looking at women, thinking about women, or flirting with women, even if you don’t have any illicit relations, there is a possibility that you will spill seed while you sleep. The best ways to combat this are to recite Psalms 1 thru 4, and to say the shema before you go to bed. It is important to try to bring the soul to a higher spiritual state so that the danger of an ‘involuntary’ emission is very dramatically reduced.

“bind them as a sign upon your arm, and they will be tefellin between your eyes” This verse refers to the Commandment of Tefillin. Tefillin plug you into Hashem. When you start wearing them, you feel an intense level of Kedusha. What are we really doing when we put them on? We are, as the Shema say, binding our arms and our head. What does this mean? It means that we are observing Hashem’s law by restraining our actions in deed, represented by the arms, and in thought, represented by the head. In controlling our limbs and our thoughts and subjecting them to the laws of our King, we are plugging our very existence into His world. We are coming closer to Him. When Hashem Commands that we bind our arms and our head, what are we binding them to? In controlling our impulses, from the body and the mind, we are binding ourselves to G-d, and declaring us and our nation to be part of His Kingdom.

“and write them on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.” The Commandment is to affix a Mezuzah to every doorway in the home with the exception of the bathroom. When you see a Mezuzah, the first thing you do is think of Hashem. You think of holiness. You momentarily raise your soul to a higher level. A Mezuzah is also a symbol that you are in a Holy place. It is a reminder that it is a place where G-d’s Holy name is written and posted on the doorway, and we should be very careful not to defile His Name by impure or immoral acts. If a strip club had a Mezuzah on it, would it be as easy to enter it? Wouldn’t you at least be acutely aware of the fact that you are doing something wrong? The same should be said about the home, or about any place with a Mezuzah. You are passing into a place where you need to act accordingly.

The second paragraph focuses on the concept of reward and punishment.

The second paragraph demonstrates the reward of guarding the mitzvoth a good life in the Land of Israel, and the punishment being exile. This is mentioned twice in the paragraph.

Three times is there mention of how we must serve Hashem with our heart. If we don’t, we are guilty of idolatry.

The second paragraph starts out with the commandment to love Hashem with all your heart and all of your soul.

If you do that, your desire to learn Torah and do mitzvoth will increase. You will perform more mitzvoth and you, and your nation, us, will reap the rewards. As we read on, we see what happens if we don’t perform the mitzvot. The Shema begins to warn us of what will happen if we begin to stray from Hashem’s path.

It is important to note that of all the ways the Torah describes going off the path. The term used is ‘yifteh levavchem’, or for your heart to stray. It doesn’t talk about deeds, but rather intentions. This can imply that if you no longer desire mitzvoth in your heart, you will quickly turn to sin. We all do this. One moment, we are on a very high spiritual level. Mitzvot come easy, and we get great satisfaction out of them. Then, for one reason or another, we commit a sin. The mitzvoth get harder, and we don’t have the strength we once did. We begin a bad habit of sinning, whether in sex, going out to the bars too much, or eating non-kosher foods. The habit, where it used to be one lone sin, now becomes a behavior. We come to accept this new behavior as permissible. Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein quotes the RamBam in saying that once we turn a sin into a learned behavior, we lose the ability to do tsuva for it or to stop it – that it how deep we sink. This is what happens when our heart strays, we take a step away from Hashem, and then we accept that place as where we should be holding. Once we take a step back, our personal standards for all facets of our life begin to lower and we commit even more atrocities. I remember that a couple of years into my tsuva, I choose to attend a synagogue about 2 miles away from where I lived. It was the singles synagogue. As time went by, and I didn’t want to walk 40 blocks to Shul, I got lazy. One Shabbat, I decided to sleep in and daven at home. Three weeks later, I did the same thing. The next thing I knew, Shabbat consisted of staying at home for 25 hours and counting the minutes until I could turn on the TV. Once I lowered the bar, anything became possible. Four months later, I did the unthinkable: I turned on the radio. I thought it would add a little joy to the day. Instead of finding a new Shul, or exerting myself to put in the effort to go to the Shul I was attending, I did something that, because of the lowering of my standards, seemed acceptable. A week later I turned on the TV. A year later, I took a job that required me to work on Saturdays. Openly breaking the Shabbat is tantamount to idolatry. Working on the Shabbat is like saying that it is my effort’s that bring in money to my home and not Hashem.

I was saying that I didn’t need to live according to His laws because I didn’t need G-d to provide me with anything. G-d created the Heavens and the Earth. He creates everything in existence at every moment of our lifetimes. My job, my salary my successes – are not mine! They are Blessings from Hashem to my family. A job, an investment, or a business – they are merely the vessels with which Hashem chooses to send His Blessings. A small sin of omission became a bad habit. This habit eventually snowballed into my desecrating the central message of the Shabbat - Hashem created the world and everything in it. He completed the creation of the world by resting on the Sabbath and we celebrate G-d creating all existence by resting on the seventh day as well. May G-d forgive me.

The consequences of these actions are documented clearly in the following lines. The first punishment in the Shema is that Hashem’s wrath will blaze against us. He will shut up the heavens and there will not be any rain. Without rain, there will not be any crop. Starvation, sickness, pestilence will follow. After we are stripped of the basic physical needs, our dignity is taken from us. The next line states that we will be quickly banished from the good land Hashem gives us - the Land of Israel.

The third paragraph talks about the mitzvah of tzitzit. Tzitzit are very important. They are a constant reminder that we are on this earth to serve Hashem and to fulfill His Mitzvot. When you are wearing tzitzit, you are less likely to check out a girl or to flirt with someone or to ‘misbehave’. One of the reasons you will behave is that you don’t want anyone to see someone who is wearing tzitzit acting like an animal. It defames all religious Jews and it makes Hashem look bad. This is called hillul Hashem – or desecrating G-d’s Name. When we see the tzitzit, we will be afraid to act in an uncouth manner and we will make sure we behaved as refined human beings. This is part of what is meant in the third paragraph. “and it shall constitute for you tzitzit, that you may see it and remember all of the commandments of Hashem and perform them, and not explore after your heart and after your eyes which you stray after them so that you remember and perform all My Commandments and be holy to your G-d.”

As long as we see the tzitzit, a symbol of the Covenant we have between our G-d and us, we will be careful with our eyes and our desires, and be pure and holy before Hashem.

We can see that the Shema is all about serving Hashem and by guarding the laws of the Brit.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s daily market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a weekly review of the major articles published around the world. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, and tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!

2008-10-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

Part 13 - Mind Control

In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous do not stand.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan called meditation ‘concentrated thought’. Prayer is a form of meditation. The essence of prayer is connecting your soul to Hashem. As your ‘mental’ sense concentrates on the words, your spiritual sense connects to Hashem. Prayer becomes a supernatural experience the moment something beyond you connects to something inside you. Prayer is an amazing and uplifting experience. In simply reciting the Amidah, you can soar to great spiritual heights, and receive from heaven the spiritual energy to get you through the day. If you do not feel this, prayer is no longer a spiritual journey to Hashem. It becomes a daily chore. Someone who is pgam habrit loses the ability to pray with concentration. We all do our best to pray with as much intent and focus as possible. Yet, there are often times where we are praying, and thinking about something else. The only part of us that is involved with the prayers is our mouths. There are times when you have to use double or triple the amount of mental and physical energy just to remain as focused as you were the previous day. There are also days where you are naturally focused. You can recite prayers with all of your being. You feel something inside you getting bigger, and you feel something outside you pulling you to a greater place. Hashem tests us at all levels. He puts walls in front of us for the sole purpose of deriving Divine joy in watching His children exert themselves to climb over them. No matter how high you climb in your spiritual journey’s, there will always be days where you have to exert yourself that much more to be at the position you were at yesterday. These are some of our biggest tests in life.

If one is pgam habrit, you will rarely be a level to gain so much out of your prayers. It will be that much harder to get into them and to experience the spiritual surge you feel when you connect to Hashem. One of the greatest rewards in becoming Shmirat HaBrit is that we are re-sensitized to Kedusha. Our souls are elevated to a point where we feel the spiritual all around us, even when we are not praying. Our prayers reach to higher worlds and their impact on us are deeper. Instinctively, we want to focus our prayers even harder.

This is the opportunity that lies in this mitzvah. In keeping the mitzvah of Shmirat HaBrit, Hashem will energize us even more each day. We will “unclog” the channels which connect our soul to Him, and He will infuse us with more of His essence. As a consequence of this, we will be able to attack each day super-energized.

It is a wonder why there are no Jewish leaders talking about this issue. It is unfortunate that not enough of the Jewish leadership educate us about the unbelievable benefits of keeping this mitzvah. It is even more unfortunate that we are not told of how severe these sins are.

Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, one the greatest practitioners of Kabbala stated that for certain sins you must fast a certain number of days to make repentance.

A person who engages in impure speech should fast 37 times. A person who did not respect his parents is to fast 45 times to atone for it. A person who is haughty or arrogant should fast 55 times.

In today’s generation, fasting is not recommended because we are much weaker than previous generations. That is not to say that one should never fast, just that before we take on such a big challenge, we should perform other methods of tsuva. I am using these tsuvot as examples for the sake of showing how severe these sins are.

The tsuva for pgam Hamachshavah are 87 fasts. What is pgam Hamachshavah? It’s the sin of thinking impure thoughts. That’s it. The ARI isn’t talking about spilling seed, or having forbidden relations, or even eyeing out a woman. All he is talking about is thinking impure thoughts. 87 fasts are also required for thoughts of atheism, thoughts of disbelief in the sages, and thoughts of hatred against fellow Jews. In the time of Noach, Hashem declared that all men had nothing but evil in their hearts. As a result, He destroyed the world. When Hashem saw that all Jews had nothing but hatred in their souls against their brethren, He destroyed our Holy Temple and sent us into exile for 2,000 years. This is how bad the sin of misusing our minds can be. It’s a very easy trap we fall into when we convince ourselves that our thoughts have no tangible impact on the world.

The 10th principle of the Rambam’s 13 principles of faith states:

I believe, with perfect faith, that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, knows all the deeds and thoughts of man.

In the spiritual world, thoughts can do just as much damage as actions.

Thinking impure thoughts lowers your spiritual level. It also creates seed. Seed starts in the brain, goes down the spine, and rests in the bowels where it is then excreted. It can be excreted by masturbation, or drops coming out of the body after urination, or by a wet dream. On the surface, it is easy to claim that a nocturnal emission or dropping seed after urination is something that we can’t control. The body does what the body does and we shouldn’t be held accountable for these acts. However, these are situations where the mind brings on a physical act without the use of any limbs. We are still responsible.

The sins of impure thoughts and gazing at women are especially dangerous. To touch a woman, or at least approach her, you need her acceptance. You don’t need anybody’s permission to think about them or to look at them.

Resisting the urge to stare at pretty women is a hard task, especially in the summer. They dress to kill and they are everywhere. Even if you are able to stop with illicit relations, and become, as Jerry Seinfeld would say “master of your own domain”, Should we be blamed for women who dress to tempt us? And why should we control our thoughts? It is the one part of our existence that we have complete control over. No matter what dictator may, G-d forbid, come to power, and no matter how much a soldier, robber, or brute could subdue any of us, our freedom of thought is something they can never take away from us.

Isn’t this too much?

Nobody said being a Jew was easy.

The eyes are the windows to the soul. If you stare at a woman, you are staining your soul. You are turning parts of your brain into semen and flushing it down the toilet. Your memory is affected and you cannot think straight. If you dream about sex, you are destroying the spiritual worlds above you in a catastrophic way. In order to prevent yourself from doing these things, you need to control yourself with all of your might.

This is not only a challenge, it is a tremendous opportunity.

To resist the urge to check out a woman is a tremendous tsuva. Our sages say that if you see a women walking by and you instinctively want to check out her body, and as she approaches, you avert your eyes, you are bringing tremendous divine light into this world. This is a very powerful tikkun. If you are accustomed to checking out women and you resist the urge, the tsuva is even more powerful. According to the Talmud, in the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous do not stand. According to the Rambam, if you are a penitent, you have experienced the pleasure of succumbing to physical desire. You know how great this desire can be. The righteous, who have battled their evil inclination, and Thank G-d, won every time, don’t know about how powerful the joys of physical pleasure can be. The completely righteous do not need to exert themselves as much as the penitent to resist temptations like these. For a penitent to resist something like this is to exert himself in the most intense and powerful way. Judaism is not only about where you are holding or what you are wearing. A great, great, great emphasis is placed on how much you exert yourself to get to the next level. According to the exertion lies the reward. The reward can be physical, or spiritual. It can be a reward for you, or a reward for all of Am Yisrael, or both. It can be a reward you enjoy in this world, or a greater reward that now waits for you in the next one – or both. In performing an act as simple, yet challenging as averting one’s eyes in the street, we can bring tremendous light into the world. We will also do what the tsuva for sexual immorality does for all of us – we restore the channels of Blessing from Hashem to the Jewish people.

As long as we are pgam habrit, the flow of Divine Blessing to the Children of Israel is clogged, and very little light gets through to us. Rabbi Nachman said that a pleasure which lasts for 15 minutes can destroy a man forever. G-d loves us. This is why resisting an urge for as little as a split second can bring so much blessing. Look at how easy He makes it!

What about controlling our thoughts?

It’s very hard. We are always thinking. Sometimes we are stuck in a situation where we are totally bored and have nothing to do. What do we do? We entertain ourselves by thinking about sex. What if you have lots of down time at the office? What if you see explicit pictures of women on the internet or while walking on the street? It’s not easy to control oneself. However, this is where a great opportunity arises. The Shema tells us to love Hashem with all of our heart, and with all of our soul, and with all of our strength. I can think of nothing that embodies this more than the exertion we all must make in order to fight our own minds. Every moment you take real control over your mind you are gaining merit for yourself and for all of Israel. Every instant you fight the urge to create semen in your brain by thinking bad things, you are bringing light into the world. Even if you engage in sexual fantasies, and somewhere along your daydreams, you mentally shout to yourself, “STOP! This is wrong!” you are truly exerting yourself for G-d with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your might. This is, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do.

Whether you are married or single, religious or secular, in a Shul or in a nightclub, you can think about sex and nobody will know. Only Hashem will be able to see the thoughts in your mind. This is a sin that in this world, anybody can get away with. In using our minds, we are using the freest and most hidden part of our existence. For any of us to control our thoughts in order to prevent us from sinning against our King, we are showing a deeper obedience to our Maker than to any human being on earth. We are willingly giving away the freest part of our identity to Hashem. In a world that values freedom and liberty above all else, for us to knowingly sacrifice the ultimate freedom to Hashem displays an intense love for Him. At every moment, we have a tremendous opportunity to tell Hashem how much we love Him. At any time, we can exert ourselves for Him just as much as a Torah sage.

Some people feel that if you want to help the Nation of Israel, you have to fight a war in the IDF. There are others who maintain that to serve Israel; your check to the UJA has to have at least three zeros on it. Know that any of us can serve G-d and the Nation of Israel wherever they are, at any moment. You can fight for us as diligently as anybody else AT THIS VERY MOMENT!

It’s a big task – but it is also an amazing opportunity.

Amongst Jews, we will talk about politics, and we will talk about guarding the Shabbat. We will talk about Kashrut and we will talk about which is the authentic form of Judaism: reform, conservative, or orthodox.

But we never talk about this. We never stand up and say how wrong sexual morality is. We are all afraid of being compared to the evangelical Christians on the right. It is seen as being perverted or sexually deviant to try not to have sex with anybody until we are married. We are all afraid of being ostracized for telling the truth.

Our silence is the greatest crime of this generation.

Our prophet Isaiah wasn’t afraid to tell a truth that was offensive to all the Jews. Even in his late 80s, he told the nation what they needed to hear, and not what they wanted him to say. He loved Hashem and Israel so much that he did his best to improve all of us. His words inflamed the Jews of his time so much, that they killed him. Rabbi Akiva was also someone committed to the truth. When the Romans forbid the dissemination of the spiritual truths of the Torah, Rabbi Akiva refused. He shouted in public what the Jewish people needed to hear. As the Roman’s peeled his skin off while they killed him painfully and slowly, the last words Rabbi Akiva spoke were, “And you shall love your G-d with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your might.”

These great men, these fellow Jews, weren’t afraid to serve their brothers and sisters by debating concepts of spiritual improvement and strength even if it meant the worst possible death. For us to keep quiet about this for the sake of something as petty as being branded politically incorrect is an abomination to our Sages. It is an abomination to our forefathers. It is an abomination to our children. We are setting a horrible example.

What’s even worse is that the Torah says that even if nobody knows about these laws, when we violate them, we are punished for them as if we knew them and still sinned. There is no leniency for ignorance in these matters. With many other sins, Hashem showers His Mercy upon us for not knowing totally the consequences for our actions.

Is there something we can do every day to remind us of what is really important and what is really at stake? Is there a way we can constantly remind ourselves to behave?

Of course.

The first and foremost is to learn a little about this every day. This is the best point to start with. Learn more about the laws of Shmirat HaBrit. Check out the websites to the right of the screen; purchase Rabbi Fishman’s Book Torah, Kaballah, and Sex or The Gates of Ephraim. There are plenty of resources available to learn more about this. Our sexual urges will challenge us for the rest of our lives. We can effectively fight them by learning a little about Shmirat HaBrit every day. We can email Rabbi’s (ask the Rabbi, online forums about this). We can promise ourselves to learn a little bit a day about sexual morality so we can garner the spiritual ability to resist the temptations that await us.

There is another benefit to this strategy.

After we die, we stand in judgment before the King. One of the questions we are asked is if we set aside time for Torah. We can spend a little bit of our day reading an article about shmirat habrit, and it counts as learning Torah. On many levels, the guarding of this mitzvah can better your existence both in this world, and in the next world.

2008-10-08T23:51:00.000-07:00

Part 12 - A Once in a Creation Opportunity

Every individual should assume that the universe’s fate depends on his behavior. The mitzvot he performs ensures the world’s continued existence.

Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a

We have an opportunity to perform a tsuva more powerful than any tsuva accomplished since we were slaves in Egypt. There are 50 levels of spirituality. 1 is the highest and 50 is the lowest. 50 is spiritual extinction. In Egypt, we were idolaters. We were obsessed with being just like the Egyptians. We weren’t forcibly enslaved by pharaoh, the Midrash states very plainly that when the pharaoh wanted to build the pyramids, he asked for volunteers. The Jewish people, who desired to be accepted in their host country so much – sound familiar – volunteered in droves for the project. In the end, the Egyptians saw us working so diligently on their national monument that they just stopped working. Then, our volunteer work was no longer voluntary. We put the noose around our necks. We enslaved ourselves, much like we do today. When we were slaves in Egypt, we were on the 49th level of spirituality. As horrible as those times were, both spiritually and physically, there was something wonderful going for us. The tsuva required for us to return to Hashem would have to be so intense and so powerful, we would have to blast the world with the light created by it. The tsuva that Hashem brought out from us was amazing. Hashem brought us from the edge of extinction, to a level of national prophecy at Mount Sinai unparalleled in all of human history.

We have a similar opportunity today. The tsuva we have the opportunity to perform is immense. The force of this tsuva has the potential to bring so much light into this world that we will blind the angels. We are living in the end of days. Moshiach is just around the corner. What could be a more powerful argument for his revelation to the Jewish People and to the world that on the strength of this tsuva? The Zohar states that Moshiach will come in the merit of those who are Shmirat HaBrit. It’s all in our hands. Those that are farthest from where we need to be have it within them to approach this place with the greatest strength and the most force. Those that are closer will have to struggle even more to reach the next step. The amount of light we have it in us to bring to the world can wipe away all the decrees that have been made against us. It has the strength to send us home. It will bring us security in our Holy Land, as it is said in the Book of Devarim:

“and you will return to Hashem, your G-d, and heed His voice according to everything that I command you today; you and your children, with all your heart and all your soul. Then Hashem will bring back your captivity and have mercy upon you, and He will again gather you in from all the peoples from where Hashem, your G-d, has scattered you. If your dispersed will be at the ends of heaven, from there Hashem, your G-d, will gather you in, and from there, He will take you. Hashem, your G-d, will bring you to the land that your forefathers inherited and you will possess it. and He will benefit you and increase you beyond your forefathers.”

These are the very lines that have been incorporated into the Prayer for the State of Israel.

It is written that there is no permanent emunah, but only through the guarding of the mitzvah of Brit Milah. We see the lack of emunah in our generation. According to Gan Emunah, emunah is the trust that everything in this world, from the order of the cosmos to the movement of a blade of grass, comes from Hashem. It is the constant conviction that Hashem personally oversees everything that happens in your life. It is the knowledge that everything that happened to us is for our own benefit – regardless of whether or not we see it.

Taking this point further, emunah is the belief that following Hashem’s Will in everything we do is the only path to well-being. It means that we should always be honest in business because Hashem is watching. It means that good always wins out over evil because good is what Hashem wants of us. As Psalm 92 states: “When the wicked spring up as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they may be destroyed forever.” Even if it looks like being a certain type of “business savvy” may make you rich, or may make someone else rich – you will eventually have to pay for your actions – either in this world or the next. Emunah is the satisfaction that for every act of goodness we perform, Hashem is watching. Hashem is the greatest force in all existence. If He is happy with what you do each day, there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

If we don’t guard the Brit, how will we ever internalize these truths? We will, G-d forbid, go through our lives trying to control everything. Of the million and one things in the world we can’t control, we will stress about it all the time.

To violate the laws of sexual morality is to violate the covenant between Hashem and the Jewish people. The Zohar goes on to state that it is like bowing down to another deity. You are violating the second commandment. Of the Ten Commandments, this is the only commandment that mentions bringing on G-d’s wrath if it is not followed.

What does this mean? How do we become guilty of violating the covenant G-d established with Avraham 3,800 years ago?

What was the initial covenant Hashem made with Avraham. The agreement was that Avraham would observe Hashem’s laws, and in return, Hashem would make Avraham into a great nation. His offspring would dwell in the Land of Israel and they would serve Hashem with all their hearts and all their souls.

What was done to make this agreement official? Avraham performed the mitzvah of the Brit – he circumcised himself, his family, and all the converts who lived with him.

On the surface, circumcision is the simple act of removing the foreskin from the male organ. On a deeper level, it has much more significance.

The mitzvah of the Brit is the first mitzvah a Jew performs in his lifetime. He is accepting upon himself the obligations of a Jew and is entering into the binding agreement between G-d and the Jewish people.

First and foremost, this mitzvah recognizes that G-d exists. Second, it recognizes that G-d is what the Torah says He is – our Eternal King.

If a family didn’t believe this, why would they perform a Jewish rite of passage? Why not have the kid baptized? Or just have the circumcision performed by a doctor for health reasons?

When we perform this mitzvah on the eighth day, as demanded by G-d, in a manner that conforms to Jewish Law, we are stating that G-d exists. We are saying He reigns over the Jewish people and over the world, and we are obligated to keep our part of the agreement by following the Torah and living our lives according to His dictates.

What are His dictates?

We are Commanded by G-d, as the Book of Deuteronomy states, to choose the path of life. We are told to choose good over evil. We are supposed to focus our energies on what is right.

What is right? The Torah. The Torah tells us what is right and wrong. G-d guides us at every decision on the correct path to take.

Can’t we make our own determination of right and wrong?

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch address’ this question in his commentary on the story of Adam and Eve. Adam sinned by eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Before the sin, Adam performed G-d’s Will instinctively. He didn’t have to think twice about anything. His intuition about right and wrong was exactly what Hashem set as right and wrong. The moment Adam ate the fruit, everything changed. Adam didn’t acquire knowledge of G-d’s good and evil, he acquired a concept of good and evil. Now that he had unobstructed free will, he could independently determine what is right and what is wrong. It was the birth of moral relativity, and the downfall of mankind.

The Brit Milah is a commitment to what is absolutely right. It is to pledge one’s life to the only principles of right and wrong that matter. Right is what Hashem says is right. Wrong is what Hashem says is wrong. Where did He say this? In the Torah. The Brit Milah is a sort of tsuva. We are committing ourselves to overcome our personal feelings of good and bad to return our soul’s to Hashem by following His laws on right and wrong.

This is at the core of the rite of entrance to the Jewish faith. It is the acceptance that a human being is born imperfect. It is the acknowledgment that we must actively strive to perfect ourselves in this world by focusing our energies in order to realize our potential. It is the acceptance that we are born with the obligation to place Hashem before us and within us at all times.

To perform this task, Hashem Blessed the Jewish People with passion. In the words of Aish HaTorah Dean Rabbi Noah Weinberg, throughout history, the Jews are a driven people. Every scientific advancement, social movement, and political upheaval has included a very disproportionate number of Jews relative to our population as a nation.

We are the most passionate people on earth.

The Covenant of the Brit is a Jew’s lifelong commitment to channel those passions into Holiness.

Hashem loves us. He wants us to realize all of our potential. He wants us to make His world a better place by performing His mitzvas. He wants us to merit a full life in this world, and a wonderful place in Olam Habah.

For the primary purpose of giving us the chance to earn all of this: He doesn’t make it easy!

What is the biggest passion there is? The passion for sex. The Torah states that the biggest temptation known to man is his sexual urge.

What is the greatest source of energy in a human being? The ability to create life. Where does life come from in this world? From, as the Pirkei Avot says, a putrid drop. Where does that putrid drop come from? From the act of sex. The greatest human made product, the body, comes from the greatest source of human energy, which emanates from an act driven by the greatest of human passions.

A core of fundamental Judaism: serving G-d is about restraining yourself. More to the point, it’s about re-channeling your energies. It is about maximizing ourselves by utilizing our passions correctly. In doing so, the rewards are greater than anything imaginable. The spiritual energy we receive, which is the basic fuel for our daily life, is immense.

Controlling and driving our passions for good instead of bad is the very cornerstone of existence. Resisting temptation keeps our existence Holy.

This is symbolized by cutting back a piece of the organ that is associated with the strongest passion. This organ has the ability to create life. It also has the ability to destroy souls. We remove a piece of the foreskin as a way of saying that our job in life is to restrain and re-channel our body for the benefit of our soul. We do this, performing the first commandment G-d makes of us, as a way of saying that even our most intense desires must be mandated by our Creator. Everything good in life comes from Him and nothing is beyond Him. We do this to say that even the acts we may see as carnal, like sex, or cutting off a piece of one’s organ at 8 days old, are acts, that if performed according to G-d’s Will, are intrinsically Holy acts and will insure that G-d will look after us and Bless us. As stated in Pirkei Avot, “Make your will His will, so He can make His will your will.”

This is at the heart of the rite of the Brit Milah, entering into the Jewish Covenant between G-d and our people.

So what happens when we misuse the very organ which sealed this Covenant? We annul the agreement. In our actions, we are stating that our passions are not something that we wish to channel somewhere. We prefer to let them loose and indulge at will. We are saying that there is no such thing as restraint, no concept on focusing our energies, no reason to refrain from doing those things which G-d forbids. We are redefining good and evil. We are independently defining what is right and what is wrong. This is the opposite of what G-d Commands of us.

The rite of Circumcision begins at the age of 8 days old. It does not end when the Mohel puts his scalpel down and screams “Mazel Tov!”

It is an ongoing commandment that we must follow all of our lives. This mitzvah stays with us forever. Guarding the purity and the holiness of the very organ we used to enter into the Covenant with G-d is something we must do at every minute of every day. To sin with this organ is to sin against the very Covenant our fathers accepted thousands of years ago.

This is why the Zohar says that to be false to this mitzvah is tantamount to serving another deity. We have annulled our faith in the G-d of Israel by walking away from our ancient and eternal relationship with Him. This is what is meant when the Zohar states that observing the laws of sexual purity is like observing the entire Torah. As long as we guard the mitzvah of being a part of the Covenant we share with G-d, we will always be bound to Him. As long as we stay a part of this relationship, every other mitzvah we perform will be within the parameters of this bond. Every mitzvah will count even more because the Commandments we are observing are being done within a document, the Torah that we ratify within ourselves at every moment.

In keeping this mitzvah, we perform every other mitzvah on a vastly higher spiritual level. Our entire essence can be tremendously uplifted in keeping this one mitzvah.

This concept can be found in the word itself. The word Brit, has a Gematra of 612. That can imply that the other 612 mitzvot stand on the foundation of the mitzvah of the Brit.

I can personally attest to this. I was not shmirat HaBrit when I made Tsuva. For a long time I did many mitzvoth, but not while keeping the laws of sexual purity. I thought I was doing fine. I didn’t realize how much of my neshama I was not utilizing. When I took on this mitzvah, The sensation of connecting to a Higher Source became immensely more energizing, invigorating, and joyous. It felt like I made tsuva all over again. Every mitzvah I did became filled with 100 times more energy. Every prayer I recited became a deeper connection to Hashem. I thought I was doing fine before I took on the laws of Shmirat HaBrit. I quickly discovered the closeness one gets to Hashem cannot compare with the immense closeness and joy one feels when he performs the same mitzvoth. But this time while being Shmirat Habrit. I didn’t take on this mitzvah overnight. It’s a challenging process, but if I can do this, anyone can. The all-encompassing happiness that accompanies this mitzvah is something that Hashem, in His love for His children, makes available to all of us.

He is giving us the opportunity to do tsuva and to realize the pure joy of defeating the demons of this world in serving Him with the highest level of vigor and strength. Every day we wake up is like a statement from our Creator saying, “I know how much you sinned yesterday, but I think today you can do better. I believe in you and that you can overcome your passions to serve Me. I want to bless you in this world and in The Next with all My Heart. Today is an opportunity to uncover the greatest happiness there is on earth.” It’s no wonder why a Jew starts his day by proclaiming the words, “Modeh ani le’fanecha.” I give thanks before You. . . . .

Let’s talk a little more about the dangers of pgam habrit. A question should be asked. If someone has not reached the age of mitzvoth, is he held accountable to this? We should also ask that if you didn’t know of the exact consequences of this sin, or of the sin itself, are you still guilty?

The answer to both questions is yes. Even if you are underage, or don’t know about the laws of sexual morality, you are guilty of this sin if you commit it. According to Sharai Kedusha, this is not true for any other sin in the Bible with the exception of this one. If you are 11 years old, you can eat on Yom Kippur and you’re not guilty of a sin. If you are 11 years old and don’t know that looking at an immodest woman is wrong, yet you still do it, it is a sin. This is something parents have to be specifically careful about. In this day and age, a six year old will most likely surf the net better than most of us. I believe that Hashem, like any merciful judge, would show mercy to a first offender at a very young age. However, this is still a sin. A parent must make sure that there are high quality blockers installed on their children’s computer. They should install software that gives a list of all websites viewed on that computer. It may be intrusive but we parents will do anything for our own children. We do all that is in our abilities to protect our children from anything dangerous. Protecting kids from the severe consequences of sexual misconduct is one of the great things we can do for our children.

Because of this sin, a person can lose his destined zivug. What is a zivug? While a baby is in the womb, Hashem decrees who his destined soul mate will be. Before he or she is born, G-d decrees who that person will later marry. Your destined mate is called your zivug. This is the person who is completely ideal for you and that you fit with perfectly. A person can lose the merit to find his zivug. This happens sometimes, especially in cases when one commits sins of sexual immorality. When this happens, you will find not your zivug. Hashem Willing, you will find your Besheret. The moment you both get married, your Besheret automatically becomes your zivug. This is someone who isn’t the perfect person for you, but becomes the perfect person for you over time as you both grow together. However, this individual isn’t the person you were originally meant to marry. It has been said by many authorities that many of us do not marry our destined soul mates! According to our faith, if you are pgam habrit, not only do you not marry your destined zivug, you may spend your entire life not ever knowing that person. Even worse, you could meet this person, know on every level of your being that this person is the one – and go through the agony and horror of that person rejecting you!

Ever obsess over someone, just knowing that this person is the one? Ever have a friend feel the same way about someone? With such a depressingly high rate of singles among the Jewish community, there has to be a direct correlation between keeping this mitzvah and in ending the agony of being alone. I was single for 10 years. I met the woman who became my wife only when I started taking on this mitzvah.

There’s good news! The good news is that if you do tsuva for this sin, your destined wife will no longer rebel against you. You will find this person and live happily ever after. We do have more than one destined soul mate in our lifetime. Hashem Willing, we will only have one wife. HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings redemption in the blink of an eye. After 50 dates, 20 singles events, and 100 phone calls, you can find your wife while waiting for a taxi, or buying coffee. It can happen when she suddenly knocks on your door because her friends address said 1C and she wrote 1B by accident.

2008-10-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

Part 11 - The Mystical Consequences of this Sin

Throughout the entire year, a person should always look at himself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin. If he performs one sin, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and brings destruction upon himself. On the other hand, if he performs one mitzvah, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of merit and brings deliverance and salvation to himself and others. This is implied by the verse in Proverbs (10:25) “A righteous man is the foundation of the world.” i.e., he who acted righteously, tipped the balance of the entire world to merit and saved it.

-Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tsuva

The Zohar is the Book of Jewish Mysticism. It is where the Kabala comes from. According to the Zohar, spilling seed is more severe than all other sins. You are not only defiling your soul in this world but also in the world to come. The Shulchan Aruch states that it is forbidden to discharge semen in vain. This is a graver sin than any other sin in the Jewish faith. The Torah goes on to compare spilling seed, whether with a forbidden women, or by masturbation, or by any other means to murder. Within each drop of semen are the souls of potential human beings. They are drawn down from heaven and put in the drops. They reach their potential when they enter the woman and attempt to become living beings. If they go where they are supposed to go, regardless of whether they become living beings or not, they are sanctified souls and become elevated. If they are spilled, these souls, which are the potential children of the individual, are not sanctified. They remain outside the body with nowhere to go. They are swallowed up by the forces of evil which always lurk around us. They then plague the individual for as long as they can. It is further maintained that one who spills seed cannot repent from these sins. He cannot elevate his soul out of gehinom, Jewish hell. This sin has horrendous consequences that are far worse than death. If you think there is an easy solution out of a predicament of spilling seed, be warned: the Zohar says that while almost every sin can be atoned for, there is no tsuva for the sin of spilling seed.

However, we are told that “nothing stands in the way of repentance.” So what is the Zohar telling us? The deeper meaning of what the Zohar is saying is that in order to rectify ourselves from this sin, we need to perform very intense tsuva. It may be difficult, but it’s not impossible. A person can wipe away virtually all of the spiritual damages he causes to himself due to this sin within his lifetime. If someone does tsuva for a sin, not only is it completely wiped away, but, the sin itself is retroactively considered as a mitzvah. That is the power of tsuva. Unfortunately, we all have a pre-packaged CNN version of what tsuva, or repentance, is. We think it is tantamount to paying a debt. You sinned a lot, now you have to say extra prayers and put yourself through self-suffering. After a while, your debt is paid and you are even with G-d.

Maybe that works for Catholics, I don’t know. Our version of tsuva is a lot different. Tsuva means to return. A sin is called an avera. It means to cross, or veer off the path. When we do something we are not supposed to, our soul is no longer properly aligned with its Source. We are distancing ourselves from Hashem. We are losing our connection to Him. When we perform acts that we are supposed to do, our soul reconnects to its Source. We are re-charged with immense spiritual energy. We begin to feel an intense inner joy that permeates into all of our being.

Here’s the best part about tsuva: G-d doesn’t wait until you have “paid off your debt” to reward you – no matter how many averot you have committed. It doesn’t matter how disconnected your soul is to its Source, a single act of tsuva is rewarded. Tsuva is not a debt re-payment plan – it is a lifelong process of gradually improving your life. Hashem is with us in every step of this journey, giving us as much spiritual and earthly encouragement as possible to push us to take the next step. The most uplifting experience in all of my life, and B’ezrat Hashem, something all of you will come to agree with me on, is the rewards both for the effort and the results of pursuing a life of sexual morality.

If you think you are too far gone to change, consider what Hashem gives us each and every day. Every morning when we open our eyes, Hashem is giving us a great gift. He is granting us another day to live. E is giving us another chance to do tsuva. He is giving you the opportunity to do a constant tsuva for these transgressions and, Hashem Willing, decrease the amount of punishment and Divine anger we have brought on ourselves. Every morning, we are given another chance to delay the Heavenly Judgment. Hashem, in His great Compassion and Mercy towards His children, gives us many chances to appease Him.

The Chofetz Chaim states that the sin of pgam habrit defiles all 248 limbs and 365 sinews of the body.

The Shulchan Aruch says that semen is the energy of the body and the light of the eyes. When it is excreted inappropriately, the body decays and part of your life is lost.

The Shulchan Aruch goes on to say that it is forbidden to purposely cause an erection or to think impure thoughts. This brings about the creation of semen within the body. It is then excreted out during a nocturnal emission, or drops come out after one urinates. We can all claim that a ‘wet dream’ or a drop spilled after urinating isn’t really our fault – it’s our bodies acting independent of our choices. The fact is that we bring this on by our heated thoughts – whether thoughts of sex, staring at forbidden images, or breaking emotional boundaries with women.

Spilling seed damages the primary channel of Blessings and spirituality from Hashem to the individual. When you disrupt these channels, your soul receives less of its vitality. This brings on a number of hardships. These include, depression, lethargy, sleeping more, health problems, difficulties with maintaining a parnussa, or, livelihood. It also is a primary cause of problems in the home regarding ones relationship with their children or their wife. It is important to know that both single men and married men can commit these sins.

As horrifying as the punishments and spiritual damages we must suffer for these sins – think of how great we can enhance our lives and our connection to Hashem if we do tikkunim for them. What happens when we change our ways, and clear the channel to G-d and allow all of His Blessings to reach us in full force. We can reverse the punishments and turn them into Blessings!

I mentioned how the sin of pgam habrit is like killing ones children. I want to go a little deeper into this subject. The Kabala is many things. It is the Book of Jewish Mysticism, it is one of the many extensions of the Torah. I think another description of the Kabala is that it is the Book of Jewish metaphysics. It is literally the science of spirituality. The basic laws of physics govern the world we see around us with our five senses. There are also many laws that govern the spiritual world around us as well. We cannot perceive this world with our five senses, but we can feel this world with our neshamot, or souls. If you cannot feel this world, don’t worry, with more tsuva and Torah learning, especially in the area of Shmirat HaBrit, you will be able to perceive more and more of some of the deeper realities that the Torah and the Kabala are talking about. We cannot exactly view or explain the complicated details of the laws of gravity, but we know that if you jump up, you will eventually come down. The same general principle applies when it comes to what you are doing regarding the sin of sexual immorality. We don’t necessarily understand the exact consequences of our sins, but we do feel its impact. We can’t explain exactly why we get these feelings when we sin like this. We just know that it happens when we do.

When we spill seed, each drop represents a potential life. That potential life has a soul that is given to it. That means, that with the thousands of drops of seed that we excrete each time we release it, thousands of souls are being brought down from heaven to this world to realize its potential to become a life.

One asks a very obvious question. What happens when the soul does not become life? A husband and wife can have sex many times before the wife, Bezrat Hashem, becomes pregnant. Even if the wife gets pregnant the first time the couple have relations, thousands of drops of seed will not make it to the proper place and become life. It’s also permissible to have relations while one’s wife is pregnant. This act guarantees that the seed used in the act of relations will not create a person. Does this constitute spilling seed? What happens to the souls that are drawn down from heaven?

The answer is that because one is engaging in an act permissible by Torah law, the souls are sanctified. The act of relations, is sanctified as it is performed the way the Torah specifies. The souls that come down with the seed are uplifted and go back to heaven. The couple feels a heightened sense of Kedusha in making this a holy act. A friend told me his personal experience of this phenomenon. Back when he was single, after a night of illicit relations with a woman when he was single, he would feel emotionally and spiritually depleted the next morning. It was hard for him to pray and his learning felt like a chore. When he got married, and engaged in the same exact act with his wife, he felt stronger the next day. He prayed with added with added strength and had a good time learning that day.

If seed is spilled, in a non-kosher manner. The souls that are brought down from heaven have nowhere to go. One is, consequently, spilling souls. The spiritual souls that accompany the physical seed become disconnected from their Source and are vulnerable. What happens to these souls? They are captured by demons. These are spiritual shells that come from the side of evil. The nourishment that is destined for these souls are also captured by these husks, or shells. This strengthens the side of evil as the souls that were discarded are swallowed up by these shells. The souls that we drop are in constant agony. Trapped in these demonic shells, they exact their revenge on the person who spilled them by hanging around that person all the days of his life and causing him constant problems.

This may sound a little far fetched, but it is Jewish reality. On Yom Kippur, we recite prayers directly confessing the sin of sexual misconduct as well as openly admitting to Hashem the demons we have created with our actions. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year and the prayers we recite are of the utmost importance. Our sages wouldn’t include references to creating demons unless it were true. They were able to perceive realities with their strong neshamot that we cannot perceive today. The same way that Einstein was able to perceive the law of relativity with a mind much more perceptive than ours.

These demons that surround us do terrible things. First off, they insert evil thoughts into our heads. Have you ever thought of some evil things and had no idea of what you were thinking? Have you ever ‘scolded’ your mind and had to mentally tell yourself that you do not believe in such things? These are the demons at work.

Another crime they commit against us is that they desensitize us to spirituality. When we sin by spilling seed, spiritually, we are down-spiraling in a deadly cycle of death. The more we sin, the less sensitive we become to everything around us. This includes Hashem, others, and love of Torah.

If you commit the same sin over and over again, you get de-sensitized to the horror of committing it. You feel more at ease with doing it. Creating demons puts an invisible block between Hashem and you. Your ability to fear this sin is diminished. Your ability to feel the power of doing tsuva for this sin is also diminished. You become very distant from the place you need to be in order to fix all of the calamities of your life. This is exactly what the demons want. This is how they work. Whenever you spill seed, you are adding strength to them.

These demons will plague you every minute of every day of your entire existence. When you die, they will still be there, ready to punish you for the sins you committed here in this reality. Remember, we are the ones who strengthen these demons. They started out as empty shells. We brought down to earth our spiritual children and gave them to these demons with our sins.

See for yourself how this impure spiritual force plagues the current reality of the Jewish People.

As deadly and dangerous these sins are, do you ever hear the Jewish leadership doing anything to educate us about it? How many national and spiritual leaders address the severe divorce rate, right now at 70%, among non-observant Jewish couples? How many Jewish leaders fight against the national tragedy that we young Jews don’t get married and begin our families until we are in our 30s and that the population of US Jewery has stopped growing? How many advocates for Israel cancel dinner with their favorite Congressman in order to educate a community on the link between sexual morality and the national security of Israel? As a nation, we have become completely desensitized to these sins.

We are in a serious situation, both individually and nationally. It is not hopeless. Every day we wake up, is a day that Hashem has blessed us, in His great Mercy and Compassion, with the opportunity to fix things. As dire as the circumstances can get, HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings redemption in the blink of an eye. If it is our sins of sexual immorality that cause so much dread among the Jewish People, it will be our tsuva that will redeem us.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe often implies that Tsuva is a very libertarian concept. Tsuva isn’t reserved for the Rabbis. It isn’t only for those who wear a kippa. If you are mired in sin and feel that you are too far gone. If you feel like you no longer have the right to do tsuva. If you feel like a hypocrite for even trying -- THAT’S GREAT! You are literally the star quarterback of the Jewish people. You are our true secret weapon and you have an amazing opportunity to redeem not only yourself, but all of us. The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that tsuva isn’t about where you are holding, but where you are going. Spiritual growth is all about the direction you are going in and the force in which you’re heading there. The worse off you are, the more powerful a tsuva you will do when you start gradually correcting your actions.

David Fink is the Editor-in-Chief of the daily investment newsletter, Real Wealth Recon. In 2008, his Real Wealth portfolio MADE MONEY, outperforming the three major indices by 38%, and the average Hedge Fund by 25%. For $99 a year, you get David’s daily market commentary, instant emails for every trade he makes, total access to David’s portfolio, and a weekly review of the major articles published around the world. Why hand over your hard earned money to someone in a suit saying “trust me.” Keep your money and trust yourself. Join the elite investors who are making money this year, and tell Wall Street: YOU’RE FIRED!