What better time is there for both parties than father and son time? The amount of love and inspiration and spiritual growth that comes from just hitting a ball or taking a walk is unparalleled. Now, add Torah learning into the mix, and the mountains that can be conquered are limitless. Avos U\u2019Bonim, which literally means Fathers and Sons, is a learning mentorship programme that has been running across the world for about 25 years, and which was brought to South Africa over 20 years ago by Asher Goldberg and Rabbi Sender Grossnass, with only a handful of boys and their father\u2019s taking part to start. Under the mantel of dedicated leadership of Pinchas Goldberg, who took it over from his brother Asher, it has grown into over 120 boys who, with their fathers, are learning every motzaei Shabbos (Saturday night). The Goldbergs grew it into a vibrant programme, and gave their brother, Yehuda Goldberg, who subsequently took over, and Calman Zaidel a strong platform upon which to work and further grow the programme.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Paysach Krohn coined the phrase: \u2018Turn Saturday night into motzaei Shabbos\u2019, to sum up exactly what Avos U\u2019Bonim does \u2013 \u201cwe do this specifically on motzaei Shabbos because, after Shabbos ends, it\u2019s a difficult time, when people just want to relax and ready themselves for the week. But this is exactly when we need to turn our minds to learning Torah, to emphasise the importance it has in our lives and our upcoming week, and, thereby, add even greater value to the learning,\u201d says Zaidel. \u201cToo often during the week we don\u2019t get to spend enough time together with our kids, or to sit and learn Torah together in a dedicated, committed way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s precisely when you are tired and lazy and feel as if you don\u2019t want to do anything, so what better time to find renewed inspiration for the week, and imbue the week with some Torah from the very start? And this learning programme does just that \u2013 it gives a time and a place where boys come and learn with their fathers for an hour or so, whatever they wish to learn, no matter the level they are on, with prizes and incentives and an atmosphere of Torah growth and fun all around. It\u2019s an amazing exercise in mentorship and the role that a rebbe \u2013 whether this is the rabbi himself, the child\u2019s father, or even a big brother or grandfather \u2013 can take in shaping a child and his growth in Torah at the same time as enjoying a unique bonding experience, like an island in time out of our busy weeks. \u201cIn essence, the goal is to just arrive \u2013 which is not such a low-level goal, especially when you look around and see 250 people, all there, on a motzaei Shabbos, learning Torah. It is inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
The participants \u2013 both fathers and sons \u2013 are all very enthusiastic, and these 45 minutes of learning gives them a boost for the rest of the week. Avos U\u2019Bonim run incentives for the boys, great prizes, and various raffles throughout the year wherein the boys stand to win more wonderful prizes. And the strength and beauty of the programme is that it is at your own pace. Each partnership chooses what they learn and sets their own goals, without any prescribed content, which opens the event up to all people, of all levels, from all walks of Jewish life. Some learn parsha (the weekly Torah portion), some mishna, some gemara, some read Torah stories, or even do revision from school. It is the quality of the experience and the opportune Torah learning with a meaningful mentor which takes precedence over content.<\/p>\n
Dovid Joffee, together with this father, Dr Charles Joffee, helps out at Avos U\u2019Bonim on a volunteer basis, and for him and his brothers, Yonatan and Aharon, the programme has been integral to their lives. Dovid says, \u201cI feel privileged to be a part of it. A lot of people take projects such as these on offer in South Africa for granted and don’t realise the tremendous effort that goes into running them. I personally have been going for the last nine years and I have enjoyed every second of it and it is definitely one of the highlights of my week.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that it is been the best programme that I have been a part of. My role model is definitely my father \u2013 he encourages me to learn and daven every day and he learns with me and guides me,\u201d says Yonatan. \u201cI started going to the programme since I was really little for a few reasons. Firstly, you can win cool prizes and it also really helps with your learning. It is vital to always learn and nothing should prevent you from learning Torah or achieving your goals in learning,\u201d says Aharon.<\/p>\n
Hadran Aloch<\/strong><\/p>\n If Avos U\u2019Bonim is an exercise in diversity and bonding in Torah learning and mentorship, with an emphasis on each person\u2019s unique potential, then the new project launched under the umbrella of Avos U\u2019Bonim, Hadran Aloch (which literally means \u201cI will return to you\u201d and comes from the text said when making a siyum, a celebration at the conclusion of learning a portion of Torah) \u2013 is an exercise in goal-setting and success in Torah learning.<\/p>\n \u201cHadron Aloch was the brainchild of Rabbi Yisroel Kaye, who together with Yehuda Goldberg\u2019s devoted strategic and operational help, including being instrumental to the final siyum, developed a learning programme with the single intention of encouraging increased learning. \u201cThat siyum involved: 382 maseches (tractates), 2 700 perakim (chapters), with over 22 000 individual mishnayos and over 900 dapim (pages) of gemara learned. Hadron Aloch looks to encourage boys to do extra learning after school with a male mentor in their lives to help them and guide them, with a pre-established goal and target to achieve in their own time and at their own pace.\u201d<\/p>\n The younger, pre-bar mitzvah boys were given a seder (in total, the mishnah is comprised of six sedarim) of mishnayos and the older boys a maseches of gemara to learn, with milestones and targets to be reached and rewards achieved upon reaching the goals, including some great incentives and prizes. \u201cThe prizes were great incentives to the boys \u2013 like Sandton City gift vouchers, cumulative gift vouchers, double bonuses for passing extra tests in an area, and additional vouchers for high achievements, R3 000 and R5 000 travel vouchers, trips to Israel \u2013 everybody felt buoyed and wanted to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the Hadran Aloch programme began, we thought it wouldn\u2019t be a huge turnout and, yet, it turned out to be an overwhelming success. It was inspiring to see 35 boys complete the required learning for the year, and, at the end of the year, we made a siyum to celebrate the achievements of these boys.\u201d The siyum was a catered dinner at Ohr Somayach with live music, attended by over 150 people and some proud parents and grandparents, all so happy to be there celebrating the achievement of the boys, including Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein, who expressed his pride at the amount of learning going on.<\/p>\n Rabbi Yisroel Brown and his ten-year-old son, Mordechai, took part in the Hadran Aloch programme, and they came out of it with renewed faith in their abilities and with the knowledge that they can achieve what they set out to do \u2013 and more. \u201cWe took part in Avos U\u2019Bonim because we are very happy to be learning together on a weekly basis, and it is a special time for us. When the Hadran Aloch programme started it was a great way for us to set up goals and achieve targets in learning with a great incentive system, and it taught us so much about both setting and achieving goals, together. We set out to complete seder moed (one part of the six parts of the entire Shas Mishnayos) which is a lofty goal. And it seemed like it would take so long and be so hard that we would never achieve it. But having the set goal on our minds and in our sights all the time, we achieved things we never thought we would ever have achieved before hand \u2013 including being tested on it \u2013 and Mordechai did so well on the tests, it made me so proud,\u201d says Rabbi Brown.<\/p>\n \u201cI started it with my father to be able to learn and grow in Torah learning and the idea that I might be able to win something made it easier for me to go out there and learn on a more dedicated basis. The programme made us feel like we always want to learn more, because when we finish, we get more stuff and that pushed us to learn faster and better.\u201d And it also helped the boys to realise that they had goals for their broader lives, giving them the tools to dream big. \u201cI would love to finish Shas Mishnayos before my bar mitzvah. The excitement of finishing something big and succeeding was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so important to look toward a goal, to reach for it, and to achieve it,\u201d says Rabbi Brown, \u201cbecause, if not, we don\u2019t actually maximise our capabilities.\u201d The siyum on completion of the learning, he says, was an \u201camazing, one-of-a-kind event\u201d. \u201cTo have so many boys, fathers \u2013 so many different types of people from various schools and different backgrounds \u2013 all coming together to just celebrate one thing, the achievement of the one goal that each boy gave himself, the achievement of setting special time to learn, the achievement of the parents who helped push the boys to learn. It was the most beautiful sight to see.\u201d<\/p>\n After completing the required learning to be eligible for the draw, twelve year old Betzalel Stein and his father, Ilan, won the Hadran Aloch 2019 draw, winning two tickets to Israel. \u201cI wanted to learn mishnayot, and I felt that joining the programme would help push me to learn more and finish a seder. And I learned that consistency counts; a bit every day adds up \u2013 which is what helped me to complete what I needed to do. I enjoy learning, and feel that I am using my time positively and I know that the Torah that I learn will always be with me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI took part because it was a good way to revise the learning that I did. It helped me set a goal that I must finish learning something, know it, and understand it properly \u2013 and the test helped me to realise that, in all learning, one has to actually know it before one can move on. Hadran Aloch was a great incentive and it was also inspiring to be part of the programme. It showed so many how important it is to achieve your goals, because it helps you to keep moving in life and, if you don\u2019t keep moving, you will remain stagnant and never get anywhere,\u201d says another participant, Boruch Saffer, 18 years old.<\/p>\n Nesanel Simmons, 17 years old, was inspired by the one goal of Hadran Aloch \u2013 that is to finish what you undertook to complete. \u201cOne of the most positive and profound things I learned is the importance of not pushing off for tomorrow what you can do today. When you start something, finish it, and this works with anything life, especially learning. Once you achieve one goal, it leads to another and so on, until infinity. Programmes like Hadran Aloch that bring in people of all ages and children of all ages to learn are an amazing source of motivation, and to see the joy in one\u2019s own success so evident at the siyum was inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n Avos U\u2019Bonim runs two holiday programmes as well with great incentives and prizes. Avos U\u2019Bonim is a non-profit organisation relying on sponsorships and support.<\/p>\n For more information, contact Calman Zaidel 083 298 4432.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A programme of fathers and sons learning together gives birth to another programme that sets the bar even higher By Chandrea Serebro What better time is there for both parties than father and son time? The amount of love and inspiration and spiritual growth that comes from just hitting a ball or taking a walk is unparalleled. Now, add Torah learning into the mix, and the mountains that can be conquered are limitless. Avos U\u2019Bonim, which literally means Fathers and Sons, is a learning mentorship programme that has been running…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-january-2020"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1741,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions\/1741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}