Category: April 2019

Keeping the Costs Down: Mexem’s Incredible Trading Fees Mexem, the introducing broker for Interactive Brokers, has been bringing world-class trading to South African investors for over a year now. Enabling trading in 120 markets and 28 currencies, all at very low fees, Mexem has dramatically transformed the face of investing for South Africans. By bringing Interactive Brokers – the largest US electronic brokerage firm – to South Africa, Mexem says it is able to offer extremely low fees that simply cannot be matched by South African firms who are limited…

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The beloved song from the Pesach Seder, Chad Gadya, may sound like it’s just a children’s song, but the meaning behind the imagery is truly profound By: Robert Sussman Written in Aramaic, the song Chad Gadya (Aramaic for “One Kid”) is the final song sung at the Pesach Seder. Its author is unknown. Why Aramaic? Our Sages wanted to conclude the Haggadah in the same language with which it began – “Ha lachma anya…”, “This is the bread of affliction…” – so they established that Chad Gadya be said in…

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By Chandrea Serebro How we love to hate matzah, and how our stomachs hate to love matzah. Most of us spend half of Pesach complaining about the lousy effect that all the matzah, chrain, and wine have on us. Yet, during the week of Pesach, we all delight at the simple pleasure of a creamy slice of geshmeerte matza. Or two. Or, why not three? Who’s counting? Besides, matzah doesn’t fill us up, so it’s very easy to keep going on and on just like the Energizer bunny. But there…

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Cecil Meltz’ profound love for every Jew meant that no Jewish man in uniform was ever alone By Chandrea Serebro Ask anyone from Bloemfontein and it’s a sure thing that they will recall knowing the legendary Cecil Meltz, who inhabited so many roles while being defined by none. His life story is a gripping tale of love and loss, war, murder, tragedy, friendship, and extending a hand to strangers. It started in Zastron, Free State, in 1920, when Cecil Meltz was born, one of nine siblings. He saw active service…

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Looking for remnants of a world that was By: Rabbi Dr Fox My visit to Morocco, my first to the African continent, was to look for graves. My wife’s father had been born there and had regaled her and me with his memories of life there before and after the war. Ultimately, he had made his way to France, to America, to Israel, and yet has retained clear images of the world which he left behind. Of interest to us was his decision, decades earlier, not to go back. He…

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Showing half the picture and taking all the credit By: Robert Sussman When did we truly become liberated from our Egyptian slavery? In other words, was there a precise point in time – even a precise location that we can point to – when Hashem took us out from Egypt where we were truly emancipated once and for all? In fact, the Torah tells us that there was such a moment where we gained our freedom, including a physical location where it took place: “Speak to the Children of Israel…

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By Ilan Preskovsky One of the hallmarks of any Seder is the challenge of keeping both old and young interested in what’s going on. Whether it’s the familiarity of a ritual we go through once (twice in chutz l’aretz) every year, the potential inaccessibility of a text that was old when the middle ages were young, or the way the main meal feels ever further away the more the Seder goes on, it is, at times, less than easy to engage in something that, by all rights, ought to be…

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By Dovid Samuels What do Purim, Shabbos, Pesach…and pretty much all Yom Tovs have in common? Besides for the food, there is almost always a bottle of wine present; usually to add to the simcha of the festival, but often mandatory. On Shabbos: for Kiddush on Friday night and Shabbos day, then havdola at the end. Purim, ad d’lo yada… (until you don’t know the difference). At Pesach: four cups throughout the night…and a fifth one poured, but not drunk. Now, there are many reasons given why we have specifically…

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Who doesn’t know the Ten Plagues? Hashem, who is All Powerful, could have done anything to the Egyptians that He wanted, so why did He choose those ten afflictions? The Midrash teaches that Hashem brought the plagues middah keneged middah (measure for measure). In other words, each one of the plagues was to punish the Egyptians for something they had done to persecute the Children of Israel. By: Robert Sussman 1. DAM (BLOOD) – WHY? The Egyptians saw that the Children of Israel would immerse in a mikvah when they…

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