Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The power of hope
Monday, November 23, 2009
we started the day at the Yeshiva with a short class. Around 10:30 we w
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Dear Friends,
Today is a great day. Today is a milestone for our program as it marks the opening of our second center. From our modest beginning a year and a half ago, with 6 students, pushing towards a new frontier, today we counted 30 students in Jerusalem and an 8 student nucleus in out new Ramat Gan center. Today, sitting on the bus to Ramat Gan, I had the pleasure of sitting next to one of my veteran students. I listened to him as he told me about his plan to join a gym and his longer term plan / dream to start a small business. I was elated as he thanked the staff of the Beit Midrash for helping him find the strength within to bring forth his potential. When he told me that he gets up every day to pray before starting his day, I couldn't help but swell with pleasure as I remembered the student that walked into our program a year ago, contending everyday with the seemingly simple task of getting up out of bed in the morning. As you can imagine, it was a wonderful boost of confidence for me as I literally and symbolically rode forward to try and bring more hope to people.
I would like to end by thanking you for being a part of this endeavor and thank you for your support, both financial and emotional. If you know of more people that would like to partner with us in this life altering program, please send them for a visit. www.shafyativ.com
Monday, August 17, 2009
Short Trip
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
catching up
Monday, January 26, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Standing by our brothers
I spoke to my friend Josh Hasten about sending food baskets to the Hesder Yeshivah in Sderot, Any other ideas???
Shabbaton in Gush
We've been planning this weekend for a long time already, with the wonderful advice and wisdom of our Mishna Berura teacher, my friend, Rabbi Barry (Baruch) Rosen (in the picture above, with Beni Horowitz).
We gave out assignments to all the guys; one was in cahrge of soft drinks, one in charge of cakes, others were in charge of spiritual food: prayers, torah reading, speeches. eveything was set, and everyone excited
...and then came the war.
We didn't know what to do, should we stick to the plans or cancel?
we decided to GO FOR IT !
IT WAS AWSOME!!!
it was better than I could have imagined.
The Guys came in large numbers, and the staff came and had a great time.
I brought my family and the staff came in full force:
Rabbi Dr. Gafni came with the family, R' Eli Cohen with his family and his guitar, Rabbi Rosen, our local Philadelphia Rav came with an arsenal of jokes and high spirits
Our social workers, Oded and Tomer were amazing as well as our versitle volenteer Beni Horowitz came out with a long list of songs...
I have to thank all of them individually they made the shabbat.
we began with Beni and a special early Kabbalat shabbat, which put us right in the mood for the great sephardic chazanut of Y. L. Then some great Divrei Torah from the students.
Dinner, more singing, Tefila in the morning, more singing, even dancing, food prayers, good times and more and more of that. We capped it off with melave malka with guitar and wonderfull singing. Wow, there is so much more, but I can't possibly get to it all
Go look at the pictures, they should be linked to the website already. for obvious reasons, I had to blur them out some but the energy should come out regardless...
http://picasaweb.google.com/avihod/ShafYativPics#
some of the people I consulted with told me this is going to be a demanding and hard shabbat. IT WAS!!! It was hard for us to end it after only 25 hours, we demanded to keep it going for another week, it was that great!!!
hope to share a lot more soon.
Rav Guy