Journey to the Land of our Souls - Ahuva Gray and Rebbitzin Bina Poston

good evening everybody can we please get seated everyone can find a seat please especially you guys first i want to welcome you all thank you for coming this will be a very special presentation tonight i want to thank the ramban for allowing us to be here tonight and especially there are two sponsors for this evening that's the casting family and the susensky family and i want to thank the great which i'll introduce in a second and of course speed on my way why we chose this concept right right before pace off as a presentation for inspiration the whole jewish nation became we were born we became converts the whole nation converted out mount sinai through the process of leaving egypt splitting the sea going through the waters we really were born born again born anew reborn like children so there's i'm before i introduce ahuva i just wanted to speak for a minute and a half just to get across an idea you know what is so special about man mankind somebody who makes a decision to choose to be jewish to involve themselves from the jewish nation so there's a mission in percy about that rav north weinberg would quote it speaks about free will the ability to choose right free will making a choice a decision and not a decision whether i want chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream that's kind of meaningless but choosing something meaningful life like itself so the mission in berkeley towards the end of the third chapter this is a continuation rabbi he says i used to say khabib shannon how beloved is man because he was created in the image of god it was a special gesture of love that god made note to him that he was created in the image of god as it says in in the torah tell him in the image of god he created man the roshu explains where if nothing very explained what is it what do you mean that's what does it mean the image of god the image of god the ability to choose free will right because god has no goof has no body it's something beyond that it's something super supernatural something very lofty and that's free will but can it really get any better than just having free will so you told a short story to get the point across what's better than free will that's the greatest gift we have so there's one thing just a little bit better than that and that as rabbi said it's the knowledge that we have so the story goes like this the way he expressed the story imagine for yourself a man a homeless person down and out and he has no money he has no food no shelter so he goes from dumpster to dumpster begging looking for scraps you decide maybe you're the friend partner we're going to put 10 million dollars in the bottom of this duffel bag the one he carries around with him the one who uses a pillow have you changed his life of course not but what if you told him all of a sudden once he has the knowledge he's able to use it and spend it sleep in a hotel get a shower every day a hot meal maybe twice a day his life has changed so it's that extra special gesture that god revealed to us and of course that's through the torah itself so the idea is about choices and the choices that we make are very important as we make as we mentioned it's not about choosing some something like ice cream so it says in the torah at the st right i bring witness to against you today the heavens and the earth the curse the blessing and the curse the only time in the whole torah that tells us what to choose is choose life so that you and your children will have a long life making a choice like this when you stand in front of a bastion and the judges look at you and they ask you are you crazy everyone wants to kill the jews i mean they're you know persecuted and you stand try to imagine your whatever life you had you're making a decision to join a persecuted people but you've done your own investigation you've made a decision it's called choosing life something very meaningful so with with that short introduction about the little bit of torah why we chose to have this presentation right before pesach also so this is the book that behooveda grey has recently written and for sale and she'll mention about a few of the other books just one more idea that i wanted to get across it's my own personal message i'm not speaking tonight they are i just wanted to leave this one message before pesach only tell us when the jews went up out of egypt twenty percent one fifth left why what happened to the other four fans they died they died there they didn't choose life we have an opportunity not just this pesach not just twice a day to stay strong but constantly every day to choose life anyway so as i mentioned the jewish people as a nation converted and without any more words for myself i want to introduce a gray who has a fascinating story and i'm sure it will all be uplifted and inspired through her words good evening it's always a pleasure for me to travel the world and share my story and baruch hashem this evening i didn't have to travel so far i have been privileged to live here in aerith israel it'll be 22 years and it's incredible and i've lived in my community by began for those 22 years what i'm going to do with you this evening is to share a vignette of short stories and explain to you how i as an ordained minister and the entrepreneur of a travel agency specializing in group movements to israel i came to israel the first time and fell in love with the country i was with a group of christians and by the way just in case of some of you don't know that i was an ordained minister and we were leaving tel aviv coming into that first curve into jerusalem and my heart started pulsating like it was coming out of my chest and i said oh my god i'm at home when i said that i really meant it i had worked for continental airlines for many many years and had been all over the world but israel was the first time in the first place i traveled that my neshama felt rooted and knitted to this land today i know it was a sole resonance when i came around that first curve into jerusalem as we are taught when we study about pesach that pesach is the redemption of the jewish people and it's the redemption of every jewish and sharma and not only that our rabbis a blessed memory say that every jewish neshama was present at horror sinai past present and future and the model of a convert well i feel like manushama was there and in rachel spec i realized now many many years later that i was headed down this path my entire life back to that first curve coming from tel aviv into your line my heart's pulsating like it's coming out of my chest isaiah 40 has always been one of my favorite uh chapters in the uh torah and the prophets and it says in isaiah 40 this it says jerusalem jerusalem lift up your voice lift it up with strength say unto the cities of judah behold your god the holy will come with a strong arm his reward is within you should gather his sheep unto himself and lead his sloth like a shepherd after i quoted those pursuing those verses i started singing to the top of my lungs don't worry about rabbi i'm not going to sing tonight and all all of the other christians on the bus were looking at me like i was losing my mind but what i find interesting about this story is i knew i wanted to live here but at that time i did not know that i was converting to judaism so enjoy that visit saw some some of the most incredible sights i've ever seen in my life and i was living in los angeles california at that time i flew back to l.a and uh what's interesting is after that first visit i came back to aries israel 14 times in 40 years everyone that knew me thought i was literally losing my my mind but it was like a magnet and i simply could not stay away back to los angeles flew back to israel every time i had a chance i was working with continental airlines at lots of vacation i've been with them for 23 years and so whenever i had a group coming i got on the plane came with the group now i need to give you the catalyst for my making my decision to move to aries israel it happened january 17 1994 that they will always be forever embedded in my mind and if we have any californians in this room you know what i'm referring to it was the north ridge earthquake and i was one of these people that had a practice of getting up every morning dominating from my hebrew sitter an ordained minister but i taught my own self to hebrew and it had he wrong one side english on the other side i didn't even know the format of my prayers at that time but i would just i also felt that it wasn't proper for me to go into prayer i knew nothing about mode little day and me at that time but i felt it wasn't proper for me to go into prayer and talk to god without washing my hands this particular morning i woke up at 4 30 and i said it's a bit early because i would get up at five o'clock in the morning so at 4 32 a.m my bed started shaking and i said perhaps it's just a dream and you're on an airplane and it's bad turbulence however about three minutes later after i was shaken violently from the bed to the floor i said get up girl it's not turbulence it's an earthquake i got up i started running i fell down at the stairwell that led to the loft in my condominium and i fell down and i looked up at the ceiling and there were these plants standing dangling back and forth from the ceiling and it looked like they were going to be come tumbling down on my head my grandmother may she rest in peace all of our children grandchildren great grandchildren the psalms i learned that when i was four years old so whenever any difficulty arises in my life it's like the appropriate to heal them just kind of raises up in my shama this particular morning psalm 121 i will lift up mine eyes into the hills which come with my help all my help coming from hashem he would not suffer thy foot to be ruled he that keepeth me will not slumber behold he did keep it israel and neither slumber their sleep hashem as i shade upon thy right hand the sun shall not smite you thy day or the womb by night he will preserve you from evil he'll preserve your soul he'll preserve you going out and coming in from this time forth even forever more by the time i got to the last apostle of that particular tertiam i finally regained my equilibrium got up ran to the front door there and finally got the door open it was still that the aftershocks of this earthquake were as just as potent and violent as the original impact i ran down the stairs and i saw one of my neighbors screaming and i threw my arms around her and started praying for her she and i went and sat by the jacuzzi while my other neighbors were sitting and as i sat there this particular morning i said to myself this you have been saying you want to live to israel move to israel and i made that decision this particular morning and as i said the aftershocks were just as potent as the original impact and as i've lectured worldwide people sometimes introduced me and they say a hoover's story is one of physical earthquakes and spiritual earthquakes that's a good way of putting it uh i was there with all my other neighbors and about two hours later i finally got the courage to go back upstairs to my condominium now i was very steeped in my gosh mess and i had lots of it and when i opened the door to my condominium i literally could not believe my eyes those plants that were dangling from the ceiling were all down on the floor on my beige carpet and all the other large plants and pottery were all upside down and ladies i want you to know when i went in the kitchen and saw all of my crystal and china broken that i had purchased in london iowa's plaques and then my attention shifted from my material belongings because they were all in shambles to my sister who lives in beverly hills and i said hashem i hope my sister's okay i picked up the phone lines of course so the phone lines were down and then all of a sudden i just ran into the bedroom and uh baruch hashem i had a nice flannel nightgown all covered up because everybody was down there by the jacuzzi in their pajamas or whatever i ran and found a right shoe in the left shoe i don't even know if they were matching skirting the blouse ran in the bathroom found a toothbrush toothpaste threw it in my purse grabbed my bible locked the door and as i was running downstairs to the garage i said hashem i hope my mercedes-benz is not smashed because the garage was under the condominium complex got the door open to the garage my car was fine get in the car and the ground is shaking crazy violently normally i would take the freeway to get to my sisters but i said to get there safe take sephora to go straight over to beverly hills i'm driving for i don't know how long it took me to get there because normally it was like a 20-minute ride at this particular day nothing was usual get to my sisters in beverly hills maybe about an hour and a half later and we get to i get to her apartment and everything's fine the only thing that happened to her is a i think a tree had fallen on her cherokee cherokee jeep and our parents have been trying to get you to us for hours because i'm assuming that they have heard about this earthquake on the news or something of that nature and finally i don't know after how many hours uh the telephone lines were finally back up my mother got due to my sister and she said put dolores on the phone i know she's moving and i could hear my dad in the background seeing is dolores moving back home to chicago and when i came to the phone i said mom tell dad i'm not moving back to chicago i'm moving to israel now my mother normally is a very calm person and uh she said to me this and i know maybe perhaps some of you in the room have heard this she said dolores you used to be one of the most obedient children i had i'm going to put your father on the phone and perhaps he can talk something into you my dad came to the phone and he said this he said dolores should just if it's shaken up by the earthquake calm down we'll call you back in two days my parents called me back in two days and when they saw they could not talk me out of this decision they simply said this my dad said this he said dolores where are you going to live how are you going to support yourself and he says you don't know the language i said dad those are great questions everyone that knows me said have always said i'm a woman of a lunatic about you faith and trust in god i said i have no idea where i'm going to live no idea how i'm going to support myself and i said i'll learn the language in my opinion if anyone decides to make aliyah don't do it the way i did it hashem was really watching out for me and when i came to israel i had i've been privileged to meet a few religious youths before i i moved here and i stayed in old catamont with rabbi mordehai goldberg and his family and then i was invited to buy for donna another dear friend of mine nielsen cohen whom i had met through a project i was working on with ruth brodie sharon he lived in bayern so i was invited to buy beyond for my first javas and when i went to buy vagon for my first shabbos and we were walking down the streets in bygones often a friday night meal it simply felt at home i had been registered on ben yehuda at this apartment listing they had not ever had a listing in buy for gone and that sunday after that shop was when i went down there they had an apartment invite began that was uh the first apartment i had there and you know it's so interesting because my community you know by began is a um haray neighborhood it is elected world riot in universities especially in oxford university in oxford england and in um georgetown university in america uh when they invited me to speak to the jewish students and they would say to me what is it like for you being african-american and living in that heritage neighborhood and i say well i moved from one black neighborhood to another black neighborhood i feel perfectly comfortable living in body forgotten when i say that i really mean it my uh community has loved and embraced me the entire time i've been there uh my rabbi rabbi hyman said fall uh was to tell me the rabbi cutler sounds all incredible people i called him and my uh him and his wife my abba and emma and uh you know by begun is is incredible that's all i can tell you uh before i uh wrote my first book and i need to share with you uh the challenge i went through uh with the best stand but uh and how i came to the uh realization that i was going to convert i knew i wanted to live here but i didn't know i was converting that family that i mentioned to you that lived in old catalon uh i had been here uh for a tour with the christian group and then i had another group that was coming and it was before the high holidays and all of my jewish friends had told me how special it was to be in jerusalem for rosh hashanah young killer and uh before this uh second group was coming i saw uh uh on the news that there was a bus bombing and then i was contacted in the group canceled that was scheduled to come and i said well it's very close to the high holidays and all of my friends have been telling me how special it is to be here for russian and young kipper so i stayed i stayed at the mariah hotel they changed the name to change the name of all these hotels over and over again and i went to rabbi mordecai goldberg and his wife for rosh hashanah we were walking down the street after and i went to bed tonight in your car and we were walking down the street and everyone was saying to my talk somebody i didn't even know what it meant they said to me i said back to them but i went to the goldberg's home rabbi mortihai goldberg had explained to me why we were taking this apple dipping it into honey and he also had to explain to me why this fish head was on the table and it looked like these two eyes were staring at me the entire night and finally after that lovely meal we're coming up on the holiest day of the entire year you don't care and i called his wife and i asked abigail i said what do i need to do to prepare myself for you know kipper she said ahuva the jewish people fast but you're not jewish and you're not obligated and i say to her if the jewish people fast i'm going to fast as well i walked back to beck connecting your car i walked in on coleman drake i did not know that cold nitrate was a nullification of all passive future violence i sobbed all the way through cole midgrade neither did i know that you do not talk during cold drink but i certainly know that today i sobbed all the way through coleman dre and there was this lovely lady sitting next to me she just kept cutting me off my shoulder blasting over the kleenexes and i looked at her and i said i have no idea what's going on with me she tapped me on the shoulder again and when i left bed knesset in your car at that particular night and walked down the streets and you july back to my hotel it was like the peace of the almighty i've not ever experienced anything like that in my life there wasn't a car kid on a bike airplane motorcycle anything and i walked back down the street that particular night to the hotel and i said i know who my god is there is some puzzle kings in isaiah 40 that says this every valley should be exalted every hill and mountains shall be made low the crooked places should be made straight in the rough place it should be replained and the glory of the lord shall be revealed and all flesh you'll see it together for the mouth of his hand and spoken it i feel like that's exactly what had happened to me in my life i had been on the search mission for 48 years and it all culminated in cole madre baruch hashem that's when i knew that i was converting to judaism after i broke the fast uh at the family that i was uh i had was acquainted with i told rabbi mordechai that i was converting to orthodox judaism he didn't seem to be so surprised the next person i told was my dear friend joseph mccoy southpaw he wasn't surprised it's so interesting in great respect no one that knew me was surprised because people that i were close to realized that i was headed down this path but i didn't really realize it until i experienced the high holidays in colton drake and after all that lovely lovely experience of course i flew back to california and this is not the kind of information that you tell your parents on the telephone so i called my parents and told them i was coming home to chicago i had something to discuss with them and when i went to chicago i had them we had this lovely meal my mother made and i said mom i want to discuss this with you and dad i'm going to be moving to aries israel and my parents just looked at me and my mother and i said i'm converting to judaism and my mother looked at me and she said this she said dolores i know any decision that you've made about god you're thoroughly investigated my mother has seen me my entire life stay up all night marketing books and bibles and reading and studying that was my whole life and i always loved reading i had known since i was back in this age that i was going to write a book after i realized i was converting and came here and moved to bypagon and uh went to the mikvah and moved out of the dorm at nishman when mishmat was still in uh and by the gun uh i went to my second apartment in bajadon and i said i didn't even have a dell laptop i had a legal pad in the pen and i said now i know what the story is about and that's when i first started writing my first book my sister's jew and after that book came out excuse me my first book my sister jew then i got incredible invitations to start lecturing all over the world to such exotic places like hong kong all over australia all over europe all over america all over canada people kept asking me are you going to write another book and i was exhausted from all that traveling and i said leave me alone i'm not writing any more books however there may be some arthuris in this room and if you get enough stories you'll always write another book my second book is entitled gifts of a stranger this book is a book about all the incredible jewish communities that i have been privileged to lend you to worldwide in incredible people incredible communities lovely families and at that time i thought i was finished as well but not necessarily so my third book is a new revised version it's called journey to the land of my soul and it's a new revised version of my sister the jew because i own the rights to my own story now and i self-publish everything and then after i finish that i really thought i was completed however the job is not done yet because it was before uh a year before the holidays and i started just kind of sitting i had a computer by now sitting at the computer thinking about incredible stories i had heard over shabbos and i said write a book about uh the high game and stories you heard over the shabbos table my fourth book is called in search of hidden treasures and that's what this book entails is incredible stories some of them are true stories some of them are stories that uh people wanted to remain anonymous but they're all in this book and i was given permission to write that book and my fifth book is called mind over matter and my sister started a business and it details how to start a business during retirement and baruch hashem i really thought i was citizen but my sixth book about prayer was still in my computer since 2007 and i just finished that up and uh my graphic artist is in the process of laying it out now and it is shall be completed properly after peace sign it's always incredible for me to share my journey with people into explaining you how i came to the realization that god is one and it's it's you know when i look back over my life i was headed down this path my entire life and coming to jerusalem that first time and experiencing that level of holiness that's when i knew i i didn't know i had a jewish new china but i certainly knew i wanted to live here and you know what i often when i say uh there's a puzzle in habakkuk two and three and it says this because that happened and then it took me like several more years before that vision came to fruition but habakkuk 2 and 3 says it's the vision is yet for an appointed time and in the end it will speak in that line go and cherry wait for it it will surely come it will not terry and my realization came after that earthquake and i did end up moving here and in my humble opinion it's one of the best decisions i ever made and we are going to leave some room for questions and answers after uh we have the next lecture and i just wanted to say that i did order books for you all to be autographed but they did not make it in the mail so we'll be sitting outside and if anybody wants to order one of these books that'll be perfectly fine with me i want to close with this pasuk and michelle and says this trust in the lord with all your heart and lead not to your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge god and he shall direct your path in all your ways know him thank you so much and it's always a pleasure for me our next speaker is my wife mina you know there's a special mitzvah to love a convert anybody love you honey it's probably very difficult to follow hoover but i think bina will do a great job no question er i just want to speak half a minute about ibanez and what we do and the truth is the name yubanet is based on hesit it's also a prayer we should build the basement soon hopefully through kessie through our actions but the secret is the same letters is the letters to spellbinary so anyway one of the things that we're going to do i should speak about uh people now what we do real quick so we decided we wanted to encourage people and help as a conduit to make connections so people can do work has it so what we what we have done if you visit our website united.com we've organized we're not creating recreating the wheel we're taking the wheel and making it better making it more accessible so there's so many organizations that are out there that are doing tests for so many years and we're introducing people and we're doing it as a group we're sending individuals we're trying to connect people to do more hesitant so one of the things pesach is coming up and it's a it's been a long standing custom for people to make donations for matzah and wine and other food for the hageem so we have a little collection box for matos team and we'll pass it around without any further ado oh so we're also going to have questions and answers both to both speakers tonight at the end hello everybody only wonderful friends i see so for those that i don't know my name is poston i was born in jamaica caribbean and i converted to judaism almost 10 years ago so as a hindu i can't say that i really understood the tradition very much i just followed what my family told me to do and you know whatever i didn't make a connection with it and in my teenage years i eventually it was an adventure towards christianity and i had a lot of problems a lot of questions and i got in trouble and was thought to be somewhat rebellious for asking the question so that was a little bit rough so i was really looking for myself and looking for my purpose and i was really struggling and i made a trip to budapest hungary and i would have never thought that i would find israel in budapest i was very heartbroken disappointed in the church and i attended an expo different countries represented and i stumbled on a booth i did not look up at the name of the booth but there were pictures of the western wall of that which relates to hakeem support and i just had a strong emotional reaction i wept this was 1995. and i looked up and i saw the word and i said israel what do i have to do with israel you know tears are a language of neshama hashem uses our tears tears cleanse us but you know for some people who don't know a lot i i didn't know a whole lot about jews or anything i mean by the church it was like they were the spiritual israel that's what i understood so i never really thought about jews in the middle east because you just don't want to go so in any case i was really arrested by that encounter and a couple weeks later i went to pray at a place called fisherman's wharf overlooking the danube um i don't know if any of you have been to budapest hungary but uh yes you have been okay lima that's great so so i was praying and it was a february and there was snow on the steps as i climbed up to fisherman's wharf and clear out of nowhere i can't say i've really read the pursuit but coming out of my own heart was this to feel up lord i want to build you a house and i said and then i broke again the tears what is this i came home to what was my christian bible i had a hunch that dubbed a medic said it and i found it in second schwann seven so anyway parked this for a while and i didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to israel for a couple years went back to the states and then a little bit later i was reading about the life of avraham avinu and i was very struck by his uh i was really really struck by it and that served to get me motivated to come to israel because i remember the encounter i had in 1995 now this was 1999. so i actually really knew i had to do this and i came here with two and a half bags and as i got out of ben gurion airport in a taxi i just said oh my goodness i feel like i'm home you know what is this so okay two months later i meet a couple of rabbis and they have an understanding of the lost tribes and they were talking and one of them asked me what is here what are your family names i told them you know matani matana shoshone my name is bina from birth my brother's name is moti i have a sister named gita and uh i have another sister her name is not so clear hebrew so i looked at their face faces this one particular rabbit i said oh my goodness this is serious i couldn't handle it it was like so much for me to think that i could have hebrew shirashi roots so i actually really really knew in the second month of being here i was a jew though not halachically a jew not bureaucratically a jew yes the jewish nisham i didn't process the the whole word jewish nasham i didn't know what that was but whatever it was i felt that i had i was a jew then i would read it enough and i would see you know i will gather them from wherever i scattered them and again it was all tears it was like i'm on the page that's me well i don't get any more snow anyway okay so then um what happened next let's see uh okay so i went to check out uh conversion in 2001 i went to audit classes and i didn't feel ready i just didn't feel like it was something i could do and uh i kept going in and out of the country every three months to stay current with my visa and a major turn happened in the year 2004 i was volunteering with aci and on yamashiwa after the siren you know people were sharing about their losses in the show i had another moment call it an aha moment you know an epiphany a moment where eternity touches time whatever i had a moment that um i knew intuitively that if i thought myself to be a jew then i had to come home all the way and the next morning i was at the bay dean and i opened a file so that was a big thing and meanwhile i was already trying to keep mild observances and i met rifka benevi my adoptive mother and yoni bettery they were my family i met them in the aci after a year of being here and i approached them and they were my people and really stood with me and i really thank you for that i love you thank you so much anyway so uh now i'm in the process of converting i'm waiting on the bureaucracy to come through i started to learn already i was um not getting through very well it was a really painful experience i i was two months shy of finishing my course i did eight months but it was hanging in the balance room we did get approved by the ministry of interior and uh it was just a no-go and they told me to leave the country for four months now that was really very hard very hard because i was very steeped into being here and and practicing my observance and um we had the help from the beginning to the end of a team organization under rabbi seth barber who did an amazing job in helping me with the whole process but um at that time in gaza there was an expulsion of jews from their home and i remember leaving here in holomo at pesach it was the 19th of nisan and i went back to jamaica and i was watching cnn and i could see what was going on in in in asa and i thought this is a real spiritual experience because i felt like i understood a pain here you know you you know that something is yours but you can't have it you can't be there and it was it it came to me as a spiritual moment of understanding those four months i felt like i don't i didn't know that i would be coming back but i i thought about root ruth um in the tanakh and i read it several times and i understand her a bit because it's like you know she says that you know your people will be my people your god would be my god and she experienced the power of a choice and i just i knew it would really happen at some point but four months was a long time i didn't eat meat i mean my one of my rabbis are my ruben said bina you're a jit a jew in training just do what you have to do you know i couldn't do it yes i had salmon i could have salads whatever it was um i worked through that but i remember a very heartbreaking experience when somebody told me i could get kosher grape juice from the store um you know cherries and i went there in a friday morning grape juice and i just walked out sobbing it was really hard anyway so long and short four months test and again with the help of a team they paved my way with the help of god i came back here and um it was a different type the tables turned from from the entrance to the country as i came through ben gurion they said oh you're here we can see you're in the computer you're making aliyah i said this is great you know so then i get in and after a couple months i went to the beginning and it was a glorious experience they said you should have never had to have left the country and they were very nice they asked me questions to do with tequila i did pretty good there and when i said the shema it was like heaven just came right down it was so overpowering and it's such an honor you know for me and i feel so humbled to be a jew and if i never accomplished anything in my life you know just to be a jew you know this is the purpose of life to connect to who we are this is avraham like you know to go to yourself because when you find yourself you find hashem and you find his purpose and everything has meaning it's not about the material things or the this or the that but to connect to the essence of who you are that is a choice a full-time job you know just to dedicate your heart and your your love and your passion to do miss vote you know i it's amazing and another thing i want to say you know this organization we formed it it's coming from that birthing place of lord i want to build you a house it hit me a few months ago in rosh hashanah and you know my husband chose the name i've been telling him of this vision in the six years that we've been married and he you know he said gibboni you know and it was right up my street so you know olam has said we build the world with doing kind acts and so this is why we started this and all of us are building something whether we know it or not we're building something we want our work to last we want to know that what we build stands you know and as we're approaching pesach it's upon us hashem should hear our groanings you know to be where i was and to groan to to feel that burden of something and to really believe that you know hashem says i made a covenant he made a covenant and he will do all this he'll take us out he'll rescue us you know he will be to us a god and we you know his people if we would dare to apprehend these realities at a time like this uh who's to tell you know we could see mashiach in our lifetime and i thank you all for for coming it's really a big brothel shame bless you especially both speakers um i guess now it's time for questions and answers not for me but for the two kind women will sit on the panels i grew up in chicago so just i grew up in the london douglas park area i went to herzl and yes you're not on the south side no i was not on the south side all my family lived on the south side i'd like to tell a story in me and tell him i hope everybody can hear me and while while bina was going through this process of going out of the country coming into the country before she converted i think it was we had a friend an american friend who a jewish woman who came from a well-known family in chicago and she called herself the white sheep of the family because her family was connected to the jewish mafia and political and machinations in the chicago political world she came here on her own because she felt that she had wanted to be in israel even though she just came up and came to israel but she had a medical problem also and it couldn't be treated and they told her here that she had to live with her problem