Alexander Birbrair's Story

hi my name is Alexander B I live in Bell Orizon in Brazil I do medical research I am a stem cell researcher I was born in Soviet Union in 1986 my parents found Professor positions in Brazil in a very far city called fortalesa at my home in fortalesa where we lived with my parents me my sister and my parents we didn't know much although we thought that we were the most religious family in the town and many of the things that we were doing at our home H now I know that they were not correct for instance we thought that every chicken every cow will be cered I didn't know that it need to have a special to become CER or a special way that we kill the animal to become ker we never mixed milk and meat or ate shrimps or pork or these kind of things because we knew this but several other things that we didn't know H we didn't keep just because we didn't know the first time that I went to sh in habat I brought all the religious Jewish items that I had with me that I knew that probably I need them in the Sho so I brought a seedle that my father gave me I brought a Talis that my father gave me and also at fing however I brought it on Friday night so I WR it kind of to the service and I just brought that feeling now I know that will be M but I didn't know anything at the time and I was trying to be the most religious that I could after I spent around two years in s Paul I was in the stage of mar career to start doing PhD and I found one place in North Carolina to do my PhD there in Neuroscience when I first arrived to North Carolina and I found in the internet that there was a habad in Greensboro that was about 50 minutes drive from where I lived I went to this kabat they received me very nice niely was ysph and in Plotkin that were young schlim they just came to Greensboro a few months before this and they really became my family so ysph proposed that a great thing will be to try Jet that I will be able to study with a partner so this was the way that I got connected with RAF yel Kazan from Manchester that now lives in Crown Heights and so he was my partner in studying he was teaching teaching me so many things that I didn't know and sometimes we would even just talk about life or things from life and he would help me in few things he will tell me stories of his life and we even became so friends that when we came to live in the Bronx in New York when I got married yel and his wife and his children they even came to spend a shabas with us we also came many times to spend shs with them in Crown so we became really friends and the learning was a great experience experience and was a great thing for me so we came to Brazil to a city that I have a tenure Professor position I have a big lab of around 20 people here we do medical research with stem cells cancer research we study several diseases and we try to progress with this medical research I believe that both learning in Jet and just generally Jewish learning it kind of guided my research and directed me and this learning will bring some type of energy to my day to my week I would like to thank so much the Plotkin family ra ysf Plotkin raav Kazan the whole jet ra Yehuda du and the whole heas from jet that do such a great job and make a important changes in the life of so many people around the world so I would like to thank all of you and you really made a change in my life so I'm very thankful and this is a great thing that you guys invent