Celebrating tall poppies

The Absa Jewish Achiever Awards is unique in celebrating the successful in a community, paying tribute to the extraordinary and remarkable among South African Jewry.

“Many people say that in South Africa, communities don’t celebrate their own,” says Howard Sackstein, the chairperson of the SA Jewish Report and the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards. “If you live in previously disadvantaged areas in South Africa and someone rises to success, their neighbours and community undermine them.

“In Australia, they even have a name for it – the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. If you rise above the masses and succeed, they do what they can to cut you down to size. Those who are very successful aren’t celebrated, to the contrary.”

However, says Sackstein, this is the opposite of how the Jewish community works in South Africa. “We celebrate each other’s successes and take pride in each other’s achievements. In fact, we go all out to try and spread the success by helping make others more successful.”

In this community, we have mentorship programmes and funds to help those who need help to get over the tough times and become successful, he says.

“We aspire to create role models to give our younger leaders something to work towards. We want tall poppies. We say, you too can become a Brian Joffe [founder of Bidvest]; an Adrian Gore [chief executive of Discovery]; or a Stephen Koseff [former chief executive of Investec]. In fact, we encourage it and shout about their success from the rooftops.”

Sackstein says it’s not just in business that we applaud success. “We want [founder of community-driven organisation, Ikamva Labantu] Helen Liebermans, [Operation Hunger founder] Ina Perlmans, and [The Angel Network founder] Glynne Wolmans, and we want them to know how much we applaud them and are proud of them. We want others to become like them or better with our full support.”

It’s rare to find communities in South Africa or in the world who celebrate their own quite like the Jewish community does. Have you ever heard of the Buddhist, Catholic, Greek, Portuguese, Anglican, Muslim, or any other community celebrating their community members’ successes? This is what the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards are all about.

“These awards are all about celebrating those of us who are successful in their fields. We go all out every year to make sure they know just how proud the rest of us are of them.”

So, make sure to nominate those in our community who are extraordinary and are doing remarkable things in business, society, in the community, and in all the categories we offer. Nominate now. Go to: bit.ly/jaa23nom