Shiur given by the Rav on Monday, Iyar 11, 5786. (April 28, 2026).

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Lots of interesting stuff in this one.

Enjoy!

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A person can lose everything, because they don’t wait one more minute

“Shmuel said to [King] Shaul, ‘You have failed! You did not keep the commandment of Hashem, your God, that He commanded you. Now, Hashem would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom shall not endure. Hashem has sought a man after his own heart and appointed him as ruler over His people, because you have not observed that which Hashem has commanded you.” —Shmuel I:13:13.

[Background: King Shaul was commanded by the Prophet Shmuel to wait for him, before performing the sacrifice ahead of his war with the Philistines. There was a very short time left to wait, before the day Shmuel had specified he would come was over, and Doeg the Edomite persuaded Shaul that Shmuel wasn’t coming, after all, and he should just get on with it, before his whole army deserted him.]

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Hashem said to Shmuel: Tell him that I wanted to give him eternal kingship, if he would have waited another two minutes.

“Then Shmuel arose and ascended from Gilgal to Gevat-Binyamin.”— Shmuel I: 13:15. And, “Shmuel said to [King] Shaul, ‘You have failed! You did not keep the commandment of Hashem, your God, that He commanded you.”

If you would have waited another two minutes, “Hashem would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.” You would have been king forever.

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A person loses out because of just two minutes, he misses out.

That he doesn’t wait for the tzaddik, he loses his whole life.

After this, he [Shaul] was meant to have destroyed Amalek. He said: I can’t kill babies, women, women didn’t do anything, they don’t go out to war! How am I meant to kill women and children?! Day-old babies?!

But Shmuel knew that this was all the [souls of] Nazis.

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When World War II occurred, so Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld said, that he had a tradition he’d received from the GRA, that Germany was ‘Amalek’.

He didn’t go and say hello [to Kaiser Wilhelm II, when he came to visit Jerusalem in 1898.]

There is a mitzvah to greet kings [Tractate Brachot: 9.]

I am not going.

And there was one person (R. Yehoshua), Tzvi Michel Shapira [author of Tzvi leTzaddik], he was the greatest gaon in Jerusalem. He didn’t know, yes to go, no to go…

A hot water urn spilled on him, boiling water, he was totally scalded, because Hashem didn’t want him to go. This was in 5658 – 1898. Two years before 1900, he [Kaiser Wilhelm II] was here.

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So, Amalek is the root of the Nuhkba, of ISIS.

Now, someone shot at Trump, the fifth time they fired at him. The Americans are already fed-up. What, what, why is he stuck to these Jews?! The Jews are the most awful people!

Are you a Jew? No, don’t stand next to me…

They say that the Jews are a nation of murderers. So now they fired on him for the third time now, but he didn’t succeed. He wanted to get into his room, he only fired at the body guards. This was on motzae shabbat, by us, it was already 5am.

So, it’s the third time they fired on him.

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Charlie Kirk – they really killed him, mamash.

He said, I am going to give a talk now, I am pro-Israel. Whoever wants to say things against [Israel], they should say it. I will respond to them.

But then, instead of replying, they gave him a bullet, straight into the throat. I don’t know why, dafka, it was in the throat. I’ll ask him.

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They caught him [Charlie Kirk’s assassin].

His father handed him over. His father saw his picture in the paper, so, who is this? This is my son! His father went from there [to the police, and said] this is my son! I don’t agree that he should be doing these things!

So his father turned him in.

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So now, we are going to learn, ‘he decreed against the Cohanim’ [of Nov, the city where King David took refuge when running away from Shaul, who wanted to kill him.]

This was the last sin of Shaul.

The first sin was that he didn’t wait for Shmuel, he missed out on eternal kingship. Now, he was meant to get kingship for four generations [instead], like Jehu. Five generations, Ahab four generations, he should also have [Shaul] four generations, at least.

Yonatan, and Yonatan’s son – but he didn’t kill Amalek.

He [Shmuel] said, now, you’ve already missed out on everything!

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And after this, he sinned a third time, which was – here, bring the Pirkei De Rebbi Eliezer.

When he sent to Tzofnit, the mother of Avner. Avner was a tzaddik. A person always needs to go and visit the grave of Avner when they go to the Mearat HaMachpelah. He merited to be buried in the Mearat HaMachpelah, because even when they kill someone with two simanim[1], a person still lives [for a while longer].

But there, [Yoav] stabbed him [Avner], he said, there it’s not a balagan like in Shuvu Banim.

He said [Avner to Yoav], there is a queue, you stabbed me, now I’m going to stab you back [before he would die from his wounds]. We’ll do it, we’re going to arrange it.

So then the whole of Am Yisrael came, and they fell at his feet. What?! Have mercy on us! We only have one Ramatkal [Head of the army] left! And now, you also want to go and kill him?!

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So here, in chapter 33, it’s written Tzofnit. Here, 33, page 115.

That [Shaul] went to a practitioner of Ov.[2] And this is “there blood is upon them”. This is not simple.

He called to him Tzofnit, the mother of Avner.[3] She was the mother of Avner. Avner was a tzaddik, but his mother was an evildoer, what can you do.

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So, Moshe [Rabbenu] asked Hashem:

Why is the first King of Israel going to die by the sword?

They said to him: what can we do? He murdered a whole city! [Nov, the city of the Cohanim].

Each person there was like the Kohen HaGadol, each person was on the level of the Kohen HaGadol, who could enter the Kodesh Kodeshim (Holy of Holies).

And he killed them! Because they gave David bread.

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Translated from a newsletter containing the Rav’s shiurim from the previous week, pp: 31-32.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] I.e. two of the signs identified in the Gemara as indicating a person is about to die.

[2] ‘Ov’ was a type of witchcraft, forbidden by the Torah, which involved trying to divine future events by using enchanted bones, perhaps, human remains.

[3] This is the witch of Endor, who raised the spirit of Shmuel from the dead, which then told Shaul he and his whole family would be killed in the coming battle with the Phillistines.