Absa Jewish Achiever Awards recognises rising stars

The Absa Jewish Achiever Awards 2023, which will be held on 21 October, will include a brand new award – the Rising Star Award – recognising a new generation of leaders.

“We have realised that in order for our community to thrive, we want to recognise, encourage, and bolster a new generation of leaders,” said Absa Jewish Achiever Awards Chairperson Howard Sackstein.

“There are many young people in our community who are making a huge difference in every sphere, including entrepreneurship, fulfilling the needs of our community, and humanitarian work.”

With nominations opening on 15 June, it’s time for schools, shuls, individuals, and humanitarian organisations to consider who they will nominate for the first Rising Star Award.

“We want to be able to recognise the roles these 25-year-olds and under are playing as emerging leaders,” said Sackstein. “They are creating a new generation of exceptional leadership for our community. We have seen this in the pages of the SA Jewish Report. We see young people importing Prime drinks, involved in software development, and running humanitarian causes.

“They follow a long legacy of remarkable South African Jews who have built South Africa in every area. We want to highlight the exceptional and extraordinary among these young leaders.

He said the award was named the Rising Star Award because these outstanding young people are at the threshold of their leadership roles. “They are only starting out in their careers, and still have amazing futures ahead,” Sackstein said. “We want to recognise them now, as they are still 25 or younger, at the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards on the night of 21 October 2023.”

The SA Jewish Report team wants to “create role models to encourage others to get their hands dirty and tackle the real issues in our country”, Sackstein said.

He said it was vital that young people stand up and show the rest of us leadership. “These are the leaders of the future,” he said. “These are the people who will take South Africa into the future. They will heal our country.”

Those who stand a chance to win the Rising Star Award will need to be doing extraordinary and unique things. They will have to be 25 or under on the day of the award ceremony.

Until 2017, the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards had a category specifically for young entrepreneurs. Sackstein recalls when Nadav Ossendryver won it in 2014, “he came to the ceremony with his maths books because he was writing matric maths the next day”.

Though this new award isn’t specific to business, Ossendryver would have qualified as a rising star because with Latest Sightings, he went on to create the largest YouTube channel in Africa, with more than two billion views on YouTube and more than one billion views across all other social media channels.

“Our community cultivates, nurtures, and rewards young leaders in all areas, so we will be doing so too from now on,” he said.