Rebbetzin Bina Sujanani Poston (13 min)

hello everybody oh my wonderful friends i see so for those that i don't know my name is i was born in jamaica caribbean 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 um that which relates to hakeem 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 meshamah 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 place 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 i don't know if any of you have been to budapest hungary but 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 medics in it and i found it in second schwarz7 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 emunah 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 round i said oh my goodness this is serious i 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 jewishness shall you process 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 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 aeci 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 beginning and i opened the file so that was a big thing and meanwhile i was already trying to keep mild observances and i met uh risk my adoptive mother and yoni better me they were my 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 anyway so now i'm in the process of converting i'm waiting on the bureaucracy to come through i started to learn already i was 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 they 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 uh a team organization under rabbi seth barber who did an amazing job in helping me with the whole process but 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 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 the 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 didn't know that i would be coming back but i thought about root ruth 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 will 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 or my ruben said bina you're a jrt 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 cherias and i went there on a friday morning you know grape juice and i just walked out sobbing it was really hard anyway so long and short four months passed and again with the help of e 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 mazato i said this is great you know so then i get in and after a couple months i went to uh debating 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 the tequila i did pretty good there and uh when i said the shema it was like heaven just came right down it was so overpowering and uh 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 jewish 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 ibone 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 uh um 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 give money 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've built 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 uh thank you all for for coming it's really a big profile and uh bless you you