"Inspiring Jewish Greatness" by Alexei Abragamov

now we have Alexei I brought them all from rage all right good evening everybody my name is Alexei and I'm here presenting all on me and rage the Russian American Jewish experience I've had that pleasure but I'm here to talk about how a general um he have inspired me to be a leader in my community and how it inspired me to own my Judaism and what I mean by that I'm going to take you back to the very beginning my first trade Shabbat on I show up with a bottle of vodka from my host I give them a bottle of vodka and they gave me something greater they gave me perspective and what I mean by that the way that family took me in the way they treated my friends my colleagues but just as unlimited kindness the way they treated each other and their children just like in a very holy and special way I was blown away this was like my first real Shabbat experience and on the cloud that same feeling that I have I want others to have and my Shabbat table and how do I do that so that that same night I ask myself questions and I said what what do I want to be what kind of impact do I want to have in my community and I started thinking I need to know more I need to learn more I need to explore more I need to experience more more importantly I wanted to inspire other it's more so since that time I've been against a many Shabbat tables and I've hosted a couple of my own and what did I learn from this experience what did I take away from it is I needed to excel and elevate my own learning so I can be that inspiration for others and I needed to really own my experience and I gave me perspective on my personal relationships and what it means to be a good human being and I learned that I wanted to have an and I wanted to be a leader so since that time that spark was lit in me and I've had the pleasure of inspiring many other people and I realized if you don't have enough done in our community and we need to really all in our experience and all in our leadership in our communities and we need more people to inspire other Jews for Jewish greatness so my challenge to you is find your inspiration and finding your quality greatness I found mine by bringing a bottle of vodka to Shabbat dinner how you guys going to find I mean to be honest with you everybody that I need a mind to a journey and I'm from the former Soviet Union so growing up I I knew very little about it and I went on this journey when I was when you know in my early 20s everybody that I meet I try to get a little something from I try to take away something what can I learn from that person how can they inspire me how can they add value to my journey so I take that pleasure and meeting everybody and I hope they they have that spark that can ignite a fire in me and a fire in others and one one more question you know options one is sort of this this it's a great question I think I mean it's it's it's our agreement that we had and it's a challenge for yourself but the way I see it is as a challenge for me to become the person that I wanted to become I don't know why other people need about only why I need it is because it's helped me on my journey to become the person that I want to be thank you [Applause] getting harder and harder judges right