Category: January 2019

Dayan Boruch Rapoport retires from the Beth Din after 33 years of devoted service By Chandrea Serebro When Dayan Boruch Rapoport looks back 33 years to the start of his career here in South Africa, he realises – not without a chuckle, characteristic of his dry English sense of humour – that he was not quite as experienced then as he is today, both in religious and legal matters, which a lifetime of learning and growing has kept him on top of, but also when it came to people. As…

Read More

The Chev and Boston City Campus and Business College have teamed up to up-skill members of the Chev’s protected employment By Chandrea Serebro There isn’t a parent who doesn’t spend his life trying as best as he can to set his kids up for success in everything that the child will do, from personal to professional and back again. And the best place to start, everyone will agree, is through education. Indeed, our very own Madiba said it best when he acknowledged that education is power. And it is with…

Read More

Some new approaches that help students of the Talmud enjoy their studies By Ilan Preskovsky While the Tanach may be the bedrock and “point of departure” for Judaism as both a religion and a culture, it is the Talmud (especially the Babylonian Talmud or Talmud Bavli) that is the best encapsulation of how Jews for the past two-thousand years have related to the Torah and, thus, how we have lived as Jews. The Talmud Bavli was compiled in the sixth century CE (the less-used Jerusalem Talmud or Talmud Yerushalmi was…

Read More

Matrics let us inside their heads, sharing their thoughts on a variety of topics By Chandrea Serebro Name the top 3 game changers in the world today? Jasmyn Lawson; ATTN:; and Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Jasmyn Lawson is a black female programmer who is the former culture editor of Giphy (yes, that Giphy, that provides us with all of the gifs on the internet). Women, especially women of colour, are notorious for being marginalised within the computer world, but Jasmyn is changing the face of our internet by making it…

Read More

Thoughts and advice from our youth By Chandrea Serebro What do you hope to see in the world in the future? My hope for the future, specifically for our country, is to see greater safety and freedom. Open access to public transport – safe, reliable, and cost-effective. Wouldn’t a bus or train to school be nice? Why are youth important today? Youth are important today because, in a digital world, our youthful optimism, energy, and desire to connect to each other in a real and social way is essential for…

Read More

By: Robert Sussman Each time we daven Shemoneh Esrei (aka the Amidah, or standing prayer), we say in the very first bracha that Hashem “recalls the chasdei Avos (the kindnesses of the Patriarchs)”. What kindnesses are we talking about? And to whom? Our Sages teach that Avraham’s defining characteristic was chesed (kindness), Yitzchak’s was din (judgment), and Yaakov’s was emes (truth). While the Torah is replete with episodes of Avraham’s chesed, as well as how Hashem tested him regarding that trait, the chesed of Yitzchak and of Yaakov is less…

Read More

The world in which we live often stands at odds with the timeless values of the Torah and the prevailing atmosphere of violence and utter disregard for human life and property which have come to be the norm everywhere is certainly no exception By: Robert Sussman Following the recent Pittsburgh massacre, Hashem yikom damam (may Hashem avenge their blood), debate raged in the US over whether Jews should begin carrying and training with firearms as a “deterrence” to future such incidents, Hashem yerachem (G-d have mercy). So, it’s worthwhile to…

Read More