Emet 20th Anniversary Gala - Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg

good evening [Applause] everybody welcome welcome welcome I want to start by giving a big thank you to each and every one of you for being here for being here for being here when I say that I mean physically being here and for so many of you for being there for EMT each and every step of the way as you helped us get to this great accomplishment and hopefully only the beginning of where we can go from here as you know at EMT every relationship is Meaningful and we don't take any relationship for granted we've been privileged to have over 7,000 students come through our programs and over 3,000 continue to be very actively involved at the same time as we have so many new students who come to our programs as we were planning this dinner it was also the beginning of our full semester on campus and you might think okay the organization is doing a dinner like they haven't done in eight years the last time we dinner was in two did a dinner was in 2016 and you might think okay the programs are going to be put on the side because we're going to focus on the dinner but I have a surprise for you or maybe to those who really know EMT it's not a surprise we have our strongest semester of our campus program in EMT history over 75 students applied to just one of our programs and we actually had to decline quite a few people just because of space thank you Shai for beginning this program thank you Shai for all the roles many roles that you have at EMT I'm not going to mention each staff member individually but I really appreciate each and every one of you and I'm not going to mention all the honores individually but I appreciate each and every one of you and in addition to the honores that Shai mentioned we're also doing something very special tonight we are dedicating the women's the vision of EMT in memory of TMA basa and this is made possible because of the generosity of her son Stephen who's here front row seat and Stephen we appreciate you and thank you to the whole family who came out thank you very much you know when I was walking around at the schoras board outside side many people came over to me and they said this feels like a wedding so I have a surprise for you as well it sort of is a wedding we're in the month of the month of I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me and we know that Hashem wants nothing more that his children should come back to him the word toua doesn't mean repent it means to return and the whole purpose of Amed is to return hashem's children back to him with love with respect with care to give each and every student opportunity to know the amazing Heritage that they come from so who is the Kal tonight so I would like to suggest that the K Kal is the Jewish people and Hashem because that's what Amed is about Amed is about connecting the Jewish people to Hashem with love with care with devotion and Ma of [Applause] everyone in this past week's para one of the themes we start off the para with b and we talks about the Mitzvah of B of the first fruits that you set aside for the co and there's a idea that I heard from my father ABA thank you for being here there's an idea that he said from this that the first fruits the idea of setting aside the first thing shows the specialness that we have for something and this is a very important Mitzvah the mitvah of Bikur there's connection to prayer in this Mitzvah the the PES is connected to the Mitzvah but then we look about 15 Pim later 15 verses later and the verse starts ha this day you become ation and talks about our relationship to and how's relationship to us and Rashi on the words ha says what is this day what day and Rashi says it's every day every day a person is supposed to say today is my day to connect to Hashem today is my day to be the best version of myself and I think this is so encapsulates what EMT is about an organization that looks at each and every student fresh that looks at every day as fresh and with the success that we came from till now we'll only go forward from here and hopefully give you all of you tremendous Nas going forward I also want to give a very big hak to our partners at EMT many of them who are alumni who see what EMT is about and say I want to support this and they are true Partners in the very definition of the word RAB MV and myself when we go to people and ask them to be partners with us they appreciate what that is and we would not be able to do this without each and every one of them I want to give a specific shout out toi the organization that really helped Emma get started and most importantly I want to give [Music] to gave us this opportunity to be able to work with an amazing Community an amazing student body RAB craft and I say this all the time we are blessed to have such amazing students such amazing community and only go forward from here