Category: October 2018

Our columnist Rabbi Dr Dovid Fox is the Director of Interventions & Community Education Project Chai, The Crisis Intervention, Trauma and Bereavement department of Chai Lifeline. He has put together the following piece to help address the horrific events in Pittsburgh. Please see the attached pdf and feel free to share it. Thank you. May we share b’soros tovos (good tidings) and may Hashem comfort His people.

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Keeping Shabbos is about more than just going through the motions, refraining from doing this and being sure to do that – it’s an entire shift in our outlook. It’s about seeing Hashem and our place in His world in a completely different way, redefining every day of the week in relation to Shabbos, while Shabbos redefines the work that we do each day By: Robert Sussman The first mitzvah that we received after going out from Egypt was the mitzvah of Shabbos. The commandment to keep Shabbos came in…

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By: Richard Sutton The World Health Organisation cites stress as the health epidemic of the 21st century. Despite our remote geographic location, South Africa is at the forefront of this global crisis. According to a recent report by Bloomberg[1] that assessed 74 countries by evaluating seven equally weighted variables,[2] South Africa is the second most stressed nation on the planet! But is South Africa really as stressed as the report implies? The answer is a resounding: Yes! The reason lies with the actual root cause of stress in our lives.…

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The ideologies behind today’s “isms” By: Bev Goldman I remember, as a student of Political Science at Wits many years ago, that part of the curriculum included the study of a number of “isms” – those that had become fashionable ideologies for some, destructive ones for others, intellectual exercises for the rest, but whatever one’s leaning, they had to be understood. And remembered. And employed, to make sense of a world which, at that time, may have felt complicated, but was nothing like today’s. We learned about communism (remember the…

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A spoonful of laughter is really the best medicine By Chandrea Serebro I asked the ‘punny’ man, Richard Bayer, about his humour. “Chickens, geese, and ducks.” Then he apologised about the “foul” language. “I will try and think of a sewing pun that will leave you in stitches,” he said. Richard and his wife, Lee-Anne, have been married for almost ten years, and have managed to survive life, dreaded disease, love, parenthood, and marriage by using laughter as the real old clichéd best medicine, but one that really works. “I…

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The profound impact of hope on both spirit and body By Chandrea Serebro “Why do some people find hope despite facing severe illness, while others do not? Can hope actually change the course of a malady, helping patients to prevail?” Sounds like some kind of new spin on the elusive ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ question. The answer, seemingly as elusive as the question itself. Is it religion? Is it spirituality? Is it some kind of new age hack or something or other? It’s funny, though, that…

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