July 18, 2016, Amudim Awareness Event Part 2 of 4 Zvi Gluck Intro

so why are we here um as we know awareness is key amudam as an organization has been dedicated to fighting whether it's sexual abuse addiction mental illness on the services side of things however the best way to deal with avoiding people needing Services is to bring awareness to the table and to let people know what the issues really are and lately more than ever these things are coming to light uh whether it's because of the tragedies that are be falling our communities whether it's because of people just everybody that I know knows somebody who either directly or indirectly has a friend a relative someone that went to school with that's familiar with these things and as we've been saying in the last few speeches that we had there's just no more room under the rug but at the same time we also keep getting the push back of saying well do you really think you're going to change anything and the world is so set in certain ways and I recently heard heard a story that I'm going to share with you and while I don't know if I'm going to change anything or everything but I know I'm going to do my part to try and I think it's really not one person it's really a lot of teamwork and it's a lot of people getting together and accepting the fact that these things happen and it starts from pent bodies in schools getting the schools to make changes implementing protocols safety precautions whether it's in chws youth programs summer camps and things of that nature but there's a great story that I heard from said in the name of Rabbi exin rabbi had a few children that died of tax many many years ago before people in the community knew what TX was and he decided he was going to do something about it and he created an organization called Dar Sharm which did genetic testing and for the first many years he was actually Public Enemy Number One many people don't know this but he was banned by a lot of schools organizations Community saying you're playing God how dare you tell who could marry who and then it took time to the point that it became a household thing and everybody has done it back in the60s Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center had the largest tasac Ward and that was really a place where kids really just went for Hospice Care and Pain Management till they were going to pass away and there was a two and a half year waiting list for people to get into that Ward and it wasn't a question of pull or money it just wasn't any room couple of years ago Rabbi Xin got a phone call from the president of kbj asking if he can please come down to the hospital they need to have a very important meeting and when he got there there was actually a ceremony set up for him with a ribbon cutting and the ribbon cutting was renaming the tasac word something else because they have not accepted a new patient in over 10 years which is how much time they needed before they can close the ward this is one person he had a dream he had a vision and he fought the odds I'm not doing that alone and we have a lot of great people and great organizations helping us but it does show me that there is change is possible and while it may not be popular and we can go through the pattern 30 years ago you weren't allowed to speak about people born with uh genetic diseases and then it went into you couldn't talk about people having cancer and then you couldn't talk about you know kids at risk or the drug epidemic and now it's the time to deal with sexual abuse and molestation so we're just going to follow the pattern of those before us and do our part as as best as we can to bring awareness and provide services and help each and every person one Soul at a time get the confidence the healing and the help that they need so for that I thank you all for coming and uh I say this I really hope that we wouldn't have to have these events or these speeches um but we're here and we're going to keep doing what we can I'd like to thank our speakers for giving up their evenings to come Dr David pelovitz uh someone who has been involved with us uh since the beginning uh who been speaking with me as been helping us on the clinical side been very involved um and really helps guide us you know to get to where we've gotten to and you know to help us grow and Rabbi elzar zwickler who's the r of see if I get this one a a BJ and D did I get that um who agreed to uh help us this evening so without further Ado I'd like to ask R zwickler to please share with us