Category: August 2018

Helping differently-abled children and their families By Ilan Preskovsky Founded in 2009 as a response to the lack of residential and vocational services and appropriate accommodation for Jewish adults and children with disabilities in Chicago, the not-for-profit Libenu Foundation has, in less than a decade, exploded in reach and depth far beyond what anyone might have first expected of it. It all began when Shana Erenberg, a nationally renowned expert in education and disabilities, teamed up with Debra Silverstein, Alderman of the 50th Ward of Chicago (which, for those of…

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Presenting our first Kosher Gourmet from Cape Town By: Justine Hepple, Bespoke Catering A friend of mine’s Whatsapp status is: “Your Plan B is G-d’s Plan A”. From my grandmother’s themed Shabbos dinners, to watching her bake biscuits during the school holidays, and helping my mother in the kitchen with her functions and dinner parties – I grew up surrounded by food, baking, and art, but I never thought it would define who I’d be as an adult. After school, I studied Interior Design, and then had the amazing opportunity…

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Making the world a better place, for everyone By Chandrea Serebro Hugo’s Greenhood – Seeing the unseen ‘#See the unseen’ is the catchphrase of Hugo’s Greenhood, and it’s the perfect fit. Hugo Paluch, who was the brainchild of the project and in whose memory it continues after he passed away at the age of 14 last year, “always noticed the little things”, says his mother Nicole. He had a gift for seeing what most people missed, and it was this gift that helped him to see a gap that hadn’t…

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Using cutting-edge technology to create new ways to remember the holocaust By Ilan Preskovsky “Never Forget” may well be written “#NeverForget” in these social-media driven days, but we are at risk of losing far more than comprehensible spelling in our attempts to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. As time marches on and we move rapidly towards the seventh decade since the horrors of World War II, the sad but inevitable truth is that there are less and less Holocaust survivors around to tell their tale. Within the next…

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How the art of care clowning is changing – and improving – lives By Chandrea Serebro When Dr Amnon Raviv was young, his dad urged him to study. ‘Go study, or you’ll end up clowning,’ his dad would say. So, he ended up clowning, relates Dr Raviv. And this is how he began a pioneering journey that would lead him from the stages of the world to the corridors of the paediatric and geriatric wards of hospitals around Israel, treating the body as well as the soul, which he says…

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Almost fifty years of family history distilled By Chandrea Serebro This is the tale of a photograph taken in 1966. It’s seemingly an ordinary photograph, but it is in fact extraordinary. It is the catalyst for bringing a family spanning generations and continents back together over 50 years later, when almost 100 years of memory and moments will again become distilled in a moment in time, captured by newer technology, yet essentially the same. Standing in this photograph, smiling back at you is a family all born from the five…

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Making discourse civil again By Ilan Preskovsky In an age of social media, instant-communication, and toxic political discourse, the way we talk to each other has taken on levels of significance and complexity that previous generations could never have so much as imagined. As political correctness and freedom of expression battle it out in our universities and the most evil and pernicious ideologies find new life in the deepest nooks and crannies of the internet, our very day-to-day existence has been upended by telecommunication technologies that have as much power…

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