Category: June 2016

  By Ilan Preskovsky Built from the ashes of a terrible tragedy, Havat Ephraim, a children’s petting zoo in Beit El, Israel, has been a constant source of chesed for nearly twenty years now. Between providing work opportunities for struggling adults and therapy for troubled children, the zoo stands as a testament not only to the young boy in whose memory it is named but for the Jewish and, indeed, deeply human ability to create meaning out of even the most seemingly meaningless darkness. As its founder, Tuvia Victor, tells…

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  By Chandrea Serebro …on the role of the parents “In order for a school to be successful in the education of a student, there needs to be a conscious partnership between the parents and the school. When a parent chooses a school, they choose to follow the ethos that the school runs by. Parents are pivotal in the success of good learning. If one wants his child to thrive, he needs to be actively involved in his child’s schooling. That said, as educators we are not the child’s parents,…

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  By: Robert Sussman Say Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation (CCHF) and what comes to mind? If you answered: the annual videos that are shown each Tisha B’av, enjoyed by thousands around the Jewish world, you wouldn’t be alone, but the CCHF does so much more than that. And it was on a trip last year to Eastern Europe that was arranged by the CCHF that Shelley and Jaron Tobias and Dr Avron Urison began to learn all about the multi-faceted work of the CCHF. “On one of the bus rides,”…

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  By: Aviva Porush Few, if any, are the parents and educators who don’t consider encouragement as one of the important “ingredients” in child rearing. Among the possible answers I get when surveying the meaning of the word ‘encouragement’ is: compliments, rewards, prize; in short, positive reinforcement. If you finish everything on your plate, you’ll get dessert. If you behave with the babysitter, I’ll take you out for pizza. If you tidy your room, you can have extra time on the computer. Many are the parents who are so “hooked…

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  By Chandrea Serebro The Academy of Jewish Thought and Learning If you want serious thinking and some thought-provoking learning, then The Academy of Jewish Thought and Learning is the place, with over 1000 adult students throughout South Africa and courses every week in Johannesburg at six different venues, and in Cape Town as well. “The Academy provides an empowering, text-based learning experience in a variety of areas, a place where students gain a no-holds barred knowledge combining traditional Torah approaches as well as Academic views – spanning the history…

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  By: David Levin For centuries, the Jewish people have been known as the “People of the Book”. And who could argue with such an appellation? One need only enter a yeshiva to see dozens of people engaged in passionate discussion and debate over a Talmud, a Rambam, or a Shulchan Aruch. Visitors to Jewish homes have grown accustomed to see walls of shelves laden with well-worn tomes and piles of books on tables that are in current study. The studiousness of the Jews is legendary throughout the world and…

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  By: Rabbi Eliyahu Sussman The Talmud[1] teaches that it was in the merit of the righteous Jewish women who persevered during the many hardships that we suffered in Egypt that we were eventually redeemed from there. In my humble opinion, allow me to say that, so too today, it is in the merit of our righteous Jewish women that the Jewish people are receiving abundant blessing. We are privileged to live in an era of Jewish rebirth and exceptional growth in Torah observance and Torah study. One could attribute…

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