Hello and welcome !

My name is Alex (or Alexander or Sasha - choose what you like). In some places I am also known as Alchemist or Snark. I was born in Minsk (former USSR) where I lived until I moved to a warmer place in 1990. Now I live in Haifa (Israel) which is located on the Mediterranean Sea coast. Here I studied in college and received an "handesai" degree (it directly translates as "little enginer" and means a college degree equavalent to the american A.S. degree). At present I work as an engineer in a software company. My birthday is 7 January so if you wish to send me congratulation or some gift - you are welcome ! Since Russian is my native language and Hebrew is my second language, my English is not very good now and I want to apologize for my poor writing. If anybody could help with correcting English on these pages, I would appreciate it very much. If you can help me with "translation", please send me e-mail. Thank you in advance.

This site is mainly dedicated to nunchaku. One can ask: "Why nunchaku ?" There is a number of reasons. First, nunchaku is my favourite weapon. Nunchaku was the first weapon with which I began my martial arts training. This is the weapon that I am the best with. Second, I think nunchaku is one of the most popular martial arts weapons. Therefore, such a nunchaku page may be interesting to many people. Third, in the meantime I am trying to write a book about nunchaku, and I am planning to place selected chapters of this book on this page to get a feedback whether the material is interesting and useful for its potential readers. I hope you will send me your feedback.

I began my martial arts training in 1988 by learning the art of nunchaku. It happened not only because Bruce Lee films, but because some of my friends were very good at using this weapons and and I learned some techniques from them. In the beginning I trained by myself, and after I had broken enough bulbs and beat myself enough times, I finally learned not to hit myself, and a little later I also learned to hit a target. For some time I was studying in so-called "young commando school" (some kind of army basic training) where I learned hand-to-hand combat and some weapons. At the same time I was practicing on my own in the use of some weapons: knife, sticks, and, of course, nunchaku. Before I moved to Israel from Russia I had gone to an underground martial arts school called "Heiwa". In this school I learned "operative karate", self-defence techniques (including usage of environmental tools), and wooden weapons, such as sticks, staff, batton, nunchaku, tonfa etc. A concept of "art" was strongly accented in this school. The teacher's favorite saying was "A true master of martial arts is a master of life". The training program included not only martial arts techniques, but also philosophy, psychology, development of creative thinking etc. Learning martial arts in "Heiwa" gave me a good experience for my future learning of martial arts. I am still in touch with my teacher from the "Heiwa" school. In Israel I took some wu-shu class (the teacher called it BaGua, but I am sure it wasn't the real BaGua-Tzuan). After I had moved to Haifa, I learned ninjutsu and krav-maga (Israeli style of hand-to-hand combat which is, my opinion, the most realistic of all hand-to-hand combat styles I have known). At the same time I kept practicing with weapons on my own, because I really like weapons. About a year ago I terminated training in both classes and in the meantime I continue practicing (mostly with weapons) on my own or with my friends.

My former "Heiwa" school teacher visited Israel in the middle of April 1997. I made an attempt to test for the black belt in weapons (3 weapons of my choice, 2 or more of teacher's choice), but, unfortunately, failed. As the teacher said, I am currently somewhere at the blue belt level (2nd kyu). The only exception is nunchaku. I dedicated most of my training time to this weapon, so my nunchaku level meets black belt requirements. The picture on the right was made during the test. An apple was placed on the top of my girlfriend's head and I broke it with a single nunchaku strike. After I had repeated it five times, the teacher grumbled "Not so accurate, but... OK". Here you can also find a video clip of this scene (AVI file, 224K). A few months before the test I'd started writing a nunchaku training guide in order to collect and systematize my knowledge. The teacher read first chapters and he liked them, so he decided to use cunning: since I failed my weapons test, I won't receive a black belt (of course). However, since my nunchaku level is so high, he decided to award me a black belt for nunchaku separately after he sees my book published. I realize that he wants to encourage me to complete this book as much as I want to finish it. So, I will keep writing it. I am planning to place selected chapters of this book here to get readers' feedback, so feel free to visit this page from time to time.

If you want to contact me, you can use feedback page, or write to me at the following address :
Alex Levitas, P.O.B. 10552, 17000 Nazaret-Illit, Israel

With best reards,
Alex Levitas.