In a speech at this year’s SINAI Dinner, SINAI Alum Ezra Grauberd spoke movingly about how the educators and therapists at SINAI Schools offered him exactly what he needed when he needed it to help him overcome his challenges and build upon his strengths. He expressed his gratitude to these professionals for giving him the tools he needed to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor.
If you are seeking a position in which you can have such a life-transforming impact on children, SINAI is hiring. Visit www.sinaischools.org/careers to find the role that is right for you. Positions are available for seasoned professionals as well as for those just starting out.
Ezra Grauberd’s Speech at the 2026 SINAI Dinner
My earliest memories of school, before SINAI, are dominated by one emotion – anxiety. I just remember being nervous when it came to school.
On my first day of first grade – my first day at SINAI – that anxiety bubbled over, but this time, unlike in my previous school, I found the support I needed. I went to Mrs. Glicksman’s office, and her patience and warmth helped me relax.
This was but the first of countless times the teachers, therapists, and staff at SINAI would offer me exactly what I needed when I needed it. They created a schedule just for me, one that not only helped me overcome my academic challenges but also alleviated my anxiety and helped build my self-confidence.
As I grew stronger academically and emotionally, they pushed me to leave the cocoon of the SINAI classroom. At first, they encouraged me to join a mainstream gym class. I remember my teacher saying to me, “Just go for 2 hours a week. Play with the other kids. You can do it.”
As I grew comfortable with that first tentative step into the mainstream school, my teachers and therapists pushed me to face the next challenge. I joined the hockey team as a goalie and started going to some mainstream academic classes.
It was a huge change. I went from being with eight kids I had shared a classroom with for years and having teachers and therapists who tailored everything they did specifically to my needs, to being in a class of 20 kids I did not know with a very different type of curriculum.
With each new challenge, I was hesitant; I didn’t believe I could do it. But my SINAI teachers and therapists were there for me every step of the way. They encouraged me, they gave me the support I needed when I needed it, and they taught me that with hard work, I could succeed.
I have carried their voices with me since graduating SINAI in eighth grade.
I heard their encouragement in my head when I started high school at TABC. I heard them urging me to be social even when it was difficult. I heard them pushing me to work harder in my academic classes. And I listened. I made friends and did well in my classes. Even in math, which had always been a struggle for me. By Junior year, I was moved up into a higher track, and by senior year, I made the dean’s list.
I even carried their voices with me as I trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro with my father, an adventure that would not have been possible if I had not internalized the lessons I learned at SINAI.
Today, as a student at Yeshiva University, I rely upon the self-confidence, persistence, and work ethic my SINAI teachers and therapists taught me, and now I can use those lessons to help me achieve my goal of becoming a doctor.
I believe my desire to become a doctor, dedicating my career to helping others, is also rooted in my SINAI experience. The caring way the therapists at SINAI worked with me helped me learn the importance of empathy and compassion for others.
There are countless things for which I am grateful to my amazing parents, but their decision to send me to SINAI is one for which I will never be able to thank them enough.
I am so fortunate my parents knew about SINAI and didn’t hesitate to get me the help I needed at such a young age. I am certain I would not be where I am today, on the cusp of realizing my dreams, if it were not for my parents choosing SINAI.
If you have a child with a learning or developmental disability who is struggling in his or her current school, visit www.sinaischools.org and schedule a tour to see if SINAI may be right for them.
To read this article as it originally appeared in the Jewish Link, click here.