Category: 2021

A year on By: Ilan Preskovsky It’s hard to believe, but as of 11 Tishrei 5782 (17 September 2021), it will have been one year since Rabbi Avraham Tanzer z”l passed away. It has hardly been the easiest, let alone the most normal of years for any of us, individually, but Rabbi Tanzer’s passing has obviously left a major hole in both the Yeshiva College campus and the wider community as well. No doubt, that’s not going to change any time soon but more even than his absence, it will…

Left-Wing Antisemitism

Why the woke left has failed the Jews By: Ilan Preskovsky Though it’s undoubtedly true that the most violent, blatant, and vitriolic antisemitic attacks come from those on the far right of the political spectrum, the recent meteoric surge in antisemitism is very much also the responsibility of those on the far left. The difference between the two extremes, though, is that while right-wing extremism – be it a neo-Nazi rally or a militant Islamist terrorist attack – tends to be proud of its undisguised Jew-hatred, left-wing antisemitism is much,…

Living in “Sukkah”

The message of uncertainty, and liberation from predictability. By: Rabbi Dovid Samuels One of the ideas given as to why we are commanded to dwell in sukkahs after the Yomim Nora’im is that just in case it was decided on Rosh Hashanah that we, chas veshalom, deserved to be sent into galus – exile, our living outside in the sukkah should be a (more pleasant) fulfilment of that harsh decree, and will hopefully exempt us from the “real thing”. The question is an obvious one: how could the experience of…

En Route

A bus driver’s guide to life By: Rabbi Dovid Samuels It was just after Rosh Hashanah, 2015. At the bus stop in the middle of Bnei Brak stood tens of families with small children waiting for the bus to take them all back home to Yerushalayim. But on the horizon, no bus could be seen. A man in the crowd made a call to the bus company, and they duly promised that they would send a bus to pick them up, and finally send them all home. They had just…

Rosh Hashanah

The spiritual root of change By: Paula Levin New Year resolutions are notoriously difficult to stick to. Even we only half believe ourselves when committing to changing something about our lives. Every year, Rosh Hashanah offers us a fresh start and a blank slate, to turn over a new leaf, start a new chapter, and create lasting change – if we harness its power. To help unpack the spiritual science behind the change it offers, we spoke to experts in personal transformation: Ra’anana-based master mindset life coach Andi Saitowitz, and…

Extracurricular activities

An unintended lesson By: Rabb Dr David Fox As a teacher of Talmud, he fit the stereotype. Poised, intellectual, focused, serious. His lectures in the yeshiva were intense and deep, pushing the young men to concentrate and to absorb his explanations and contemplate his questions. I found it a challenge to get to know him, because he was self-contained, in his own league. He modelled authority, was candid and perceptive, but in our one-on-one interactions, I found him self-assured and not engaging. As a post-high school student, far from home,…

Saving money doesn’t mean sacrificing taste

By: Adrienne Bogatie To try and keep my grocery bill down, I am always looking for alternatives to meat. In my home, black bean burgers are a big hit and actually taste really close to meat burgers. Working odd hours also means I want food that is quick to make. I chose these recipes because they are so easy and convenient. Even though technically the boerewors kebabs aren’t really a recipe, they are a quick, easy, and different way to serve your boerewors. I love Chinese food, but don’t always…

In the spotlight

How Social Media is Really Affecting Your Kids By Ilan Preskovsky Considering its humble origins as an interactive platform through which creators could connect with audiences (Myspace) and as a student project that was initially just a collection of basic information of the students at Harvard (Facebook), it’s staggering to see how far social media has come in just fifteen short years. The current social media heavyweights, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (along with video sharing platforms like YouTube and, heaven help us, TikTok), aren’t just ubiquitous in our current cultural…

One at a time

The little things we do…add up By: Maria Beider As an old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young boy picking up starfish and putting them into the sea. He asked the boy why he was doing this. The boy answered that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun. “But the beach goes on for miles and there are thousands of starfish,” countered the old man. “How can your efforts make any difference?” The young boy looked at the starfish in his hand…

That hurts!

Tuning into the pain of others and asking for help By: Robert Sussman If we look at the davening that we do each day, we’ll notice something interesting – it’s almost entirely in the plural, in particular the focal point of our davening, where we ask for the many things that we need – shemoneh esrei [lit: eighteen, referring to the number of blessings in that prayer, to which one blessing was later added making for a total of nineteen blessings (while the name eighteen was preserved) and which is…

Babi Yar

June 25, 2021August 31, 2021 Jewish Life

By: Yevgeni Yevtushenko (translated into English by Benjamin Okopnik) No monument stands over Babi Yar. A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone. I am afraid. Today, I am as old As the entire Jewish race itself. I see myself an ancient Israelite. I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured And even now, I bear the marks of nails. It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge. I’m in a cage. Surrounded and…

Teaching Our Kids to Save

Why the Correct Values are Everything By Ilan Preskovsky This probably isn’t entirely surprising to the average reader of this magazine, but South Africa has one of the worst savings cultures on the planet. That is to say, South Africans, on average, put away far less of their salaries or other monthly income towards their savings than the citizens of most other countries. And this is a reality that existed long before the current (but, hopefully by now, receding) pandemic wreaked havoc on the personal finances of most people worldwide.…

From their kitchens to yours

Turning a passion for food into something more By Chandrea Serebro Tastes just like pudding Little ready-made puddings for her little pudding. This was what Shevi Lurie went in search of when her second-born daughter was ready to start eating solids, ready to use whatever kosher store-bought options she could to support her in the daunting task of raising an unfussy, healthy eater. “I remember so clearly when my older daughter was at the same stage. Never mind being a new mommy and all the challenges that it brought, starting…

Festive Foods

Why We Eat Them and What They Represent By Ilan Preskovsky For Jews, food is an intrinsic and inextricable part of our culture and our religion. It is with food that we celebrate major life-cycle events, from birth to death, and all our festivals are marked by large meals and certain, usually symbolic dishes unique to each. Even Yom Kippur, our most holy of holy days, is marked by food: though in this case, the lack of it. Culturally, too, even if most “Jewish food” is borrowed cuisine from whichever…

Taking a timeout

Financial Lessons to Learn From COVID-19 By Ilan Preskovsky At the time of this writing, registration has just opened for those 60 years of age and over to receive their COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks, and we’ve miraculously avoided a third wave despite the Pesach and Easter holidays being a hotbed for large gatherings. A post-COVID world looks brighter and more tangible than ever. Indeed, despite people still wearing masks and social distancing, it looks for all the world like things are almost back to the way they were.…

The Impossible Dream

Balancing a Jewish South African Budget By Ilan Preskovsky These tough, pandemic days may be particularly hard on the economy, but for so many Jewish South Africans, it seldom seems like there are anything but economic hard times. This, regardless of the fact that relative to most other South Africans, a large percentage of Jews are middle class, and relative to so-called “developed” countries, the cost of living here is fairly affordable. There are, however, unique financial challenges to being both Jewish and South African – and all the more…

Wake up

They did it so that we could do it Rabbi Dovid Samuels There is a widespread custom to stay awake learning Torah the whole night of Shavuos. Although this is not such a big feat in the northern hemisphere, it certainly tests us down here in the Southern hemisphere. The commentators[1] explain that this custom is based on a very peculiar event that took place on the eve of us receiving the Torah. The verse says: “Moshe took the people out to meet Hashem.”[2] Where were we, and why did…

18 going on 70

The story behind Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah and the day that forever changed the world By: Robert Sussman We say it every year at the Pesach seder; in fact, it’s one of the most well-known lines from the Haggadah: Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah said, “I am like a seventy-year-old man…” But what does it mean? Why did he say it and what was his point that he was “like” a seventy-year-old man? He needed an afternoon nap? He was suffering from aches and pains? And why would he think his…

A Truly Wealthy Man

A Tribute to Eric Samson By Ilan Preskovsky During the more than two-hour-long tribute video to Eric Samson that was hosted by Chief Rabbi Goldstein to mark the end of Samson’s shloshim (the thirty-day mourning period), Phillip Krawitz of the United Jewish Campaign summed up just why there was such a lengthy tribute to Eric Samson in the first place. In what is probably an apocryphal tale, Krawitz tells of how a certain king approached the patriarch of the famous Jewish banking family, the Rothschilds, and asked him, “So, tell…

A final year like no other

Making matric work over miles (and Zoom) By Chandrea Serebro Yeshiva College Boys, Matan Kaplan What was your biggest challenge writing matric during COVID-19? Every human being on this planet has had challenges and missed opportunities due to Corona. The biggest hardship for me was that it fell during my final year at school. With syllabi to finish and ideas for school projects and innovations to be launched, everything was brought to a screeching and dramatic halt in March. My school adjusted and pivoted with incredible flexibility and fluidity and,…

Boomerang

Whatever we do…comes back to us By: Robert Sussman Regarding the sotah[1], a married woman who behaved in a way that gave rise to a suspicion of her having committed adultery, the gemara teaches a fundamental lesson: “B’middah sh’adam modeid, bah modi’deen lo – With the measure that a man measures, with it, he is measured.”[2] In other words, we are judged according to how we judge – and we are rewarded, or in the case of the sotah, punished – for the way that we behave. But more than…

Fashioned in the Furnace

The vaccine of our great suffering By: Rabbi Dovid Samuels The night of the seder is designed to instil in us, and all of those participating at the seder, belief and faithfulness to the truth that Hashem is completely in control of every aspect of our lives, both on a national and individual basis. Even the matzah is referred to as the bread of emunah – faithfulness. As with every mitzvah, the more we prepare ourselves beforehand, the more effect it will have on us when we fulfil it. But,…

Simply Irreplaceable

Remembering Rabbi Desmond Maizels By Ilan Preskovsky Rabbi Desmond Maizels, ztz”l, passed away suddenly on 15 January 2021 and it’s hard to overstate just how much of a void he has left behind in the South African Jewish community, but most especially in the Cape Town community that he served for decades. To say nothing, of course, about the gigantic loss felt by his family and friends and, really, anyone who knew this universally beloved giant of South African Jewry. Rabbi Maizels was born in Port Elizabeth in 1949 and,…

Cherish the moment

Brief encounters of the present kind By Maria Beider A few weeks ago, my dear uncle, the patriarch of our family, succumbed to our contemporary, common enemy, Covid. While he is one of many thousands to have lost his life to this horrific virus, I was personally heartbroken – not just for myself, but for my mother and her siblings, who could not see him face-to-face for months, and for my aunt, his wife, who was also suffering from the virus at home and was unable to say goodbye to…

A (not so) ordinary hero

Giving someone the gift of life By Chandrea Serebro The tried and tested marketing Rule of Seven says you will have to leave no less than seven impressions for people to even notice you. In the same way, Matnat Chaim, the organisation in Israel that facilitates altruistic kidney donations, wormed its way into Shaul Behr’s consciousness until he found himself being prepped for theatre to donate a kidney. But it wasn’t exactly an ‘impulse buy’. Even though all he kept hearing was how safe and relatively pain-free kidney donation is,…

Brothers at heart

We may argue, we may have our differences, but when push comes to shove, we come through for each other By Chandrea Serebro Picture it. Somewhere in Israel. 2020. The time is Corona. A second lockdown seems imminent, and everybody is feeling the strain. Social distancing is the name of the game. Socialising a thing of the past. Shuls are out of sight, but not out of mind. People are resilient, and even within the constraints of the lockdown there are outdoor minyanim popping up everywhere – in the middle…

Defiantly Prosperous

Why Jewish Life on University Campuses Continues to Thrive By Ilan Preskovsky It’s no secret that the past few years have not always been easy on Jewish students on university campuses, both in South Africa and abroad. Organisations like BDS (the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement against Israel), and its newly-minted South African variety, Africa for Palestine (A4P), have made universities a central target for their campaign to de-legitimise Israel and any Jewish claims on the land. For all that BDS and its associates insist that they’re a non-violent movement…

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Studying abroad vs staying at home By Ilan Preskovsky Of the two great questions that all South African students must ask themselves as they contemplate their future after high school, “what’s next?” is undoubtedly the more daunting, but “where next?” has become a question of increasing urgency and relevance. A tertiary education or straight to work? A more specialised, technical college or a major university? By correspondence or attendance? But perhaps most crucially, at home or abroad? Many Jewish students, of course, will be able to push this off by…

There is nothing else

Cutting through the confusion with a genuine, clear Torah perspective By: Robert Sussman We live in a time of tremendous confusion, where it can be exceedingly difficult for us to make sense of everything going on around us. The world has radically changed almost overnight. As a result, entire industries have disappeared and, along with them, thousands of jobs and careers. The economy lies in shambles. The future is uncertain. We blame our leaders. We blame our doctors. We blame our rabbis. We even blame each other. Or, we say…

Behind the mask