It's about three months since I came to this new place for some personal mission with public implications, the most important of which is my educational initiative to transform darkness into light.
This week I finally took the first step in this direction - perhaps a small step for others in absolute terms but a big one for me in relative terms - I taught the first lecture of each of the two courses I had planned as part of this educational initiative. I don't have many students yet, but I thought - and still think - it more important to start than to wait until I have enough students.
The two courses, both of which are based on the teachings of Chabad Chassidus, are commentaries of the Pentateuch by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, who is the teacher of my former teachers in Jerusalem, and positivity bias according to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh rebbe of Chabad.
I was especially touched to see a junior high school student as one of my students in the second course with his father. He was rather shy during this first lecture, but his father told me later that his son burst into talking in excitement right after the lecture. Those seeds of positivity I shared with them in this first lecture are just the tip of an iceberg, but I've already sensed anew that "a little light dispels a lot of darkess" as Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad, said.
I also had another, no less important, first-time experience this week. I finally had my first private lesson in my most favorite language, Russian! I found my new private teacher in a local Russian course. Somehow I sensed intuitively that she must be an excellent teacher even before I took part in one lesson of hers in this course at a local culture school for adults. My intuition was correct. Right after this lesson I asked her to be my private teacher, and to my joy, she agreed on the spot.
I wanted to improve my practical skill of Russian in speaking and writing not only for its own sake as I love this language so much that I even consider it as one of the two daily spiritual nourishments but also for some practical purpose.
While waiting for this first private lesson for almost two months, I corresponded with her in Russian, which has already helped me a lot. I've been pleasantly surprised to discover through this correspondence that we also seem to share the same ideas about spirituality, Western mainstream media and geopolitics - the three areas in which I've experienced awakenings.