Aleph - Ezra Ashkenazi Video

Throughout my life I've watched my father open up organizations. He was always doing community work and sometimes on a very very large scale. Simultaneously I've seen him doing very private in our living room with just one person who needed help and that a lot inspired the mission statement, the vision and the actual concept of Aleph is that yes, Aleph is done on a grand scale but it's also done on a human to human one-on-one level. I can remember three or four months into when I started working with him, he came over to me and said he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me to discuss you know what can be improved. At one of those check-ins he would say, "Joe, I want you to know you're family." And he's treated me like a son ever since. >> I always admired him opening up these organizations [music] and not just putting money into it, putting his time, putting his energy, putting his focus. And I was lucky enough my wife was involved in Propel and another organization with him. And she used to come home talking and how much she was so impressed with him. Ezra as we know is a visionary in our community. [music] He's a tremendous helper. He's a builder of people and Aleph is about building people and helping them grow. He's not a person that just writes a check. He's a person that builds from scratch. The roster of community organizations that he started is is very rare. He would believe in people and give them opportunities. I'm not surprised by its growth and very very proud of the team. We're an organization that gives people the opportunity to share their experience with others and empower other people. Clients are gaining a lot. We're we're pairing people off with community leaders. Feedback I'm getting from the clients, they're saying I gained a lot. It was eye-opening. We empower not just the person being helped, we empower the mentor. As I was fundraising and getting donations from the community and they said, "Okay, here's the donation but I would definitely love to get involved as a mentor." And our mentor base started growing exponentially with the donations that we were getting. Myself and my siblings had the honor, real honor and privilege to watch someone like my father all of our whole lives. Honoring his parents, [music] honoring his community and for us now to be in a position to do the same for him is absolutely incredible. This honor of the naming of Aleph after my dad is truly befitting because of everything he's done for the community. The fact that Aleph is being renamed the Ezra Ashkenazi Aleph Foundation is so fitting. To have his name on the organization now is literally a dream. We are always thinking about our parents, how we can make them proud, how we can honor them and do it in in a very deliberate manner. For my father with Aleph to name the organization after him, incredibly humbling and if we could do a fraction of what he did for his parents, it would be a tremendous tremendous accomplishment. >> I think with Ezra being a part of the team, I think that Aleph can only grow to >> [music] >> greater heights which I have no doubt it will. I'm very excited about the future for Aleph. Thank God we've been seeing a tremendous uptick in not only the excitement of the mentors and more mentors coming in but we're seeing a lot more clients calling which is tremendous. We're very very excited. The best is yet to come with Aleph. It's very very true.