Project Inspire 2026 Convention Yaakov Friedman on Toronto 2.0 in the Village Shul

You have people who have strong Jewish backgrounds connecting with people who don't necessarily have Torah backgrounds. They come together and they share that Torah with each other. That's the mission of Project Inspire. I got involved through Rebi Sidner from the village show. The main trip that we had recently was the trip to Israel. The project inspired leadership trip. >> The idea was can we bring 40 50 guys from North America who all went to yeshiva who all learned. >> We toured every day. We met Rabbi Gman. We met at the end of the trip and the leaders of project inspire they sat us down and said now what >> they said okay we got to have a learning program. Let's bring the from community non-firm community. Let's bring them together. >> From this trip terra 2.0 know Toronto project inspired village shaw was born. >> They all came back on fire and they kept bringing people from their shoes re reaching out to more and more people to come learn. >> When it was all said and done we had 150 plus lom and malam that were learning on a weekly basis. It strikes me as a necessity for Jewish people to make people aware of what their heritage is and what better way to do it through study, through a shul, through community. >> Bringing Jews to an understanding uh how what it is to be a Jew, how is to have a connection with Hashem, understanding how the Torah is an instruction manual for life. >> We've got all these people who want to learn, who want to grow. I've been coming for quite a few sessions now. have a great harusa and it's rounded out by the good company and some fruit and drink. >> This is something I want to be a part of cuz I want to sort of meet new people, meet other Jews and continue building a life of Torah. I know for myself personally, Makabusa pretty much every week texts me in the morning. He says, "Yakov, are you coming?" I'm like, "You better believe it." Just looking around the whole room and seeing the array of people learning. It's very incredible to see. The written material that we're given to study is really well written. week cars the tove another week don. It's actually at a reasonably uh deep uh level. Tonight we're studying about blessings and basically showing gratitude. I'm constantly working on that. >> A guy walks up to me as he was leaving toward 2.0 and he said, "Rabbi, I just want to tell you, you have no idea how much I've learned in this program." And this guy is, you know, he's not from yet. He says, "Besides what I've learned, just starting to learn Torah has showed me that there's so much I don't yet know and there's so much more for me to learn." He goes, "And that's been eye opening for me." This is one person with one story. For me, Kira was basically a new experience seeing how people are coming from the other side to Yiddish. It's tremendously rewarding. I'm so happy that I could do a little part. My hope is that uh the relationship between the village school and project inspire continues to grow. We continue to inspire hundreds more and that project inspire furthers their mission around the world to replicate this many many many times over. Ladies and gentlemen, as Project Inspire 2.0 0 continues to thrive in Toronto. It is my honor to introduce to you Yako Freeman who came all the way from Toronto to be here with us this Shabas for project inspired village Shul Toro 2.0. It's extremely humbling to be up here. I finally got the courage and then we hear from Ref Far these beautiful words. The whole Shabas we've been having one speaker after another professionals best of the best. So I think we should just put on the YU basketball video again and I'll just go sit down on my table. Thank you Yosi once again. You pulled off a beautiful event. First class all the way from A to Z or like in Canada we say A to Zed. I I seriously think I don't think Yasi ever sleeps. No matter what time I text him, it could be 11 o'clock at night, 6:00 in the morning. Within a minute, there's a couple dots on my phone and he's responding. We really appreciate everything he does. I also want to thank my good friend Rafim Samson for everything he does for the organization. I think on a weekly basis I get at least two or three WhatsApp messages and or phone calls and he's the only person I know that gives my mother a run for her money. She could leave me a five minute WhatsApp message. Rabim, you're pretty close. But he always with his wit and with his generous nature, he always asks, "What can we do? What do you need to move this program forward? What's the next project?" And we really appreciate it. Finally, I'd like to say a shout out to our good friend Dr. Stuart Heightman, uh, chairman of the board of Project Inspire for everything he does, not only starting this movement, I think would have no told you Stuart, now is the time. He'll be so proud of this beautiful movement you started. Thank you so much for everything you do, and we get to see you on a weekly basis at our learning program. So, thank you so much. ROI, return on investment. Every businessman knows what that is. You look at what you're spending and you wonder, is the return worth it? You do it in business. You do it in a curve organization. You're spending millions of dollars. How do you gauge success? If 50 women go on a trip and one woman comes back and keeps Tara, is that a success? If a hundred men go to and 99 come back and have a weekly kusa, is that success? How do we gauge success? I want to share with you a story I once heard that changed my perspective on cure. In 2012 at the kinnis of Schluos, Mrs. Furma Shapiro addressed from Australia addressed the crowd and gave the keynote address. I'm not sure why I watched it. maybe was the Australian accent, but she said a story over about her grandfather Rabim Gutnik. He was was in Melbourne, Australia as a for the Reb in the early 40s. Australia wasn't what it is nowadays with a vibrant community. It was was very secular. And the Reba asked Rav Goodnik Zassal to make an evening to invite women from the city to talk about Tarba, Shabas, Mila. He prepared that evening only one woman showed up. Obviously, he was very let down all this effort and he told the Reb, "Maybe I should go back to New York." The Reb told him words that I I'll never forget. He said, "Raf, Mosha Rabenu only had one mother." You don't know if that one woman that came to your event will go home, decide she wants to live a tarika life, marry a from person, her son might be a rashiva, a RV, influencing hundreds and thousands of people. You never know. So the point that I took out of that was every single yid that we bring closer to Torah and mitzvah is important. But we also have to be cognizant of the fact that as long as there is one yid that is not living the tidika life that's not keeping shabas our job is not done we can rest on the project inspire leadership trip as was build an amazing trip but that's for another discussion I don't want ysi to start getting upset at me although that what I said about you doesn't count toward my time it was it was a tremendous trip at the end of the trip. Yasi and Rabim sat us down. We broke into groups and they said, "Okay, gentlemen, we had a fun week. We learned a lot. What are we going to do? What's the next project?" We all have done the breakfasts and the dinners and the monthly gettogethers, but we wanted to do something with Kum, something that's going to last. So we had about eight malam that went on this trip from Malam and we said each one will be responsible to get two or three friends and together with Rabbi Sitner who was our trip leader and the RV of the village schol in Toronto a cure of powerhouse for many of you who have been on trips with him he's fantastic his schul has a tremendous membership of on the journey people and he says, "You find the malamdom to have a a kavusa and I'll find the lom." We decided we're going to have a five to six week program of learning preprinted material with help from project inspire. Every week a different topic in English and Hebrew, easy to follow along. And what unfolded was truly unbelievable. We got maybe 25 30 malam to agree to this. Three days later, Abi Sitner says 35 people showed up. So we started getting we need more malam then 70 people. When this program was finally started there were over 150 people learning together on a weekly basis. Truly unbelievable. And it was so successful that we're still doing it. This was between Pes and it continued every week. We don't always get 150. People have weddings. People have homework with their kids. But we still have some weeks 50 people, some weeks 125, sometimes 140. People have a thirst for Torah. And no one understands this better than Project Inspire. They they know. We all know when your son is three, many of us take him to to RV or to Rebi and the Rebi gives him some honey and points to the letters of the olive base because when you show someone the sweetness of the toy, when you show someone the sweetness of being a fromid, they come back for more. They want more. And Project Inspire guides you every step of the way. So, we're really grateful for their leadership and for their for all the help they give all organizations. I'm looking at the crowd. I had the pleasure of meeting many of you over Shabas. Everyone here has a passion for cure and wants to do something. Like Rabbi Shapiro mentioned when he opened up with a diva, it's a lot warmer in Miami than Terrytown, New York. None of us are here for a vacation. We're here because we feel like we either want to learn new strategies or we want to learn how to get more involved. So I say please reach out to Yasi, reach out to reach out to project inspire they'll give you the tools to see how in your communities you could bring something there and I just want to conclude by giving everyone here a in that you all should be blessed with gazint from your children and we all should be learning together in Thank you.