From a former student
Dear Rabbi Sultan,
My name is “Student”. Nine years ago, when I was in grade 7 at Associated Hebrew Schools, you were the teacher in charge of my grade’s tefilla period. I know you probably don’t remember me, because nine years is a long time, and I wasn’t even in your Talmud class, but I still felt like I had to send you an email to say thank you. You changed tefilla for me. I grew up in a pretty traditional, modern-orthodox home; my family kept shabbos and kept kosher, but my parents didn’t really teach us much else about yiddishkeit, so I didn’t really have any connection to tefilla. Tefilla period was always the dreaded period, for me and for a fair portion of the kids in the room, because we were expected to sit still and not talk for 45 minutes. For a 12 year old kid who’s not engaged in tefilla, that’s a long time. But every now and then, you would go up to the front of the room and speak to us about why tefilla was important, using stories with your kids as mashals. I don’t remember the exact story that you said that made something click for me, but I just remember one day after you spoke to us, I thought, “wow, this actually makes sense…maybe I should try it.” And I gradually became more an more connected to tefilla because of you. I really have been meaning to send you this email for a very long time, but it honestly just kept slipping my mind, and I wasn’t even sure how to contact you until last week. I felt I needed to let you know and thank you, even after all these years. I hope you continue to have such a positive impact on your students in the future.
To all teachers and administrators as you begin the new school year . I received a beautiful email this past week from a former student. So beautiful!!! Please have in mind that you never know how you can impact a student.