Taking note of a helping hand By: Rabbi Dr David Fox The sun was still rising when we began our walk to the tiny house of worship. It was, literally, in a little house, where a select group of men gathered very early every Shabbos morning for worship and prayer. I could see and could feel the frosty mist which still covered the air around me with its soft breezy touch. We were not the only ones out at that hour. The alleyways and paths through the labyrinth of stone…
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The Influence of and Influences on Jewish Cuisine By Ilan Preskovsky What we eat and what we drink has been at the heart of Judaism for as long as it and we, the Jewish people, have existed. From the Torah detailing what Avraham gave his visitors to eat to the often intricate laws of Kashrut and the even more intricate rules of the sacrifices (almost all of which, after all, were comprised of foodstuff), our great tradition has placed a major emphasis on food and our relationship to it. Even…
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The Most Versatile Budget Foods That Belong In Every Jewish Kitchen By Ilan Preskovsky In these uncertain times, the financial stability of people around the world has seldom looked quite so unstable. The fact that it’s a situation whose effect on most people around the globe may well have made the truism “we’re all in this together” relevant as almost never before doesn’t make it any less scary. Frankly, the ever-increasing cost of living in South Africa was high enough to begin with long before the arrival of COVID-19 and…
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Flying through life…and Israel By Chandrea Serebro From Bapsfontein to BB Netanyahu, Kevin (Akiva) Braun is flying through the ups and downs of the life of a pilot in Israel, learning Hebrew while flying over the chosen land, seeing five capital cities from Jerusalem’s clear skies and transporting prime ministers, celebrities, and not one, but two Israeli Chief Rabbis all in a day’s work. And it is a dream come true, after a lifetime of Hashem’s Divine assistance that lead him there. “It is a real privilege to live and…
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Learning lessons in resilience, as we search for meaning and purpose By: Maria Beider When the whole world as we know it and as our parents have known it is turned upside down, what happens to us psychologically and emotionally? When your living room becomes your kids’ classroom, your bedroom is turned into a yoga studio, people don masks and gloves in order to buy their groceries, and the price of crude oil is negative, there is pandemonium. Or is that an understatement? In the last few weeks, as the…
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An impossible task? By Rabbi Dovid Samuels At Har Sinai, we all famously proclaimed: “Na’aseh v’nishmah!” – “We will do and we will learn!” We received 613 mitzvos – 613 ways to connect to our Creator, and every single one is necessary. The Sh’lah[1] – one of the most famous Kabbalists from the 17th Century – teaches us an important concept that has become very well-known: the human body is made up of 248 limbs and 365 sinews. The 613 mitzvos of the Torah are made up of 248 positive…
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The mother of kings By: Robert Sussman We are accustomed to reading Megillas Rus (the book of Ruth) on Shavuos and there are several reasons for this. One of those reasons is because Shavuos is the yarzheit of Dovid HaMelech (King David), therefore we read about his birth and about his forefathers. We all look forward to Moshiach ben Dovid and this is one of the fundamentals of our faith. The day will come – soon, please G-d – when we will all be gathered to Eretz Yisrael and there…
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