Choose to live a different life

Do you feel the heaviness, which has weighed us down for much of this year, lifting? Are you still feeling the darkness brought on by loadshedding? Are you still concerned that so many are emigrating and leaving us behind?

Well, I feel a sense of relief and a lightness of being. I guess I’ve grown accustomed – although I hate the thought of it – to loadshedding, and I’m not convinced there are such a huge number of people emigrating. Besides, my sense is that the grass isn’t greener wherever they’re heading.

Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re speeding into our December holidays, and there’s no time to be down about anything because there’s way too much to finish before we can relax.

Then, in this community, it doesn’t take much to recognise that what we have is so worth looking after and staying here for.

Last Thursday night, I joined almost 1 000 other Jewish women at the Chevrah Kadisha’s fundraiser. I understand the Chev had to turn people away because so many women wanted to be there.

That hardly sounds like a community in distress or a community that’s sparse and on its way out of here.

We gathered together, enjoyed each other’s company, and celebrated the amazing reality that is the Chev. We shed a happy tear for the hundreds and hundreds of people whose lives have been saved in some way because of this incredible organisation.

It was an awesome evening, in which we couldn’t get enough of one another. The joy of being at a gathering where we dressed up and hung out, being entertained and learning something, was incredible.

But the biggest message that came home to me is that we’re here, we love each other, and we aren’t going anywhere. Yes, there are people emigrating for many varied reasons, but most of us are happy right here in this wonderful community.

When Autumn Rowe – the Grammy Award-winning songstress and song writer – spoke about her tough childhood and how her life would have been different if there had been a Chev in New York, it resonated with me. We’re so fortunate to have organisations like the Chev that we have created to sustain us on every level.

Then came the event that we on the SA Jewish Report work towards every single year – the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards. It’s our fundraiser and the annual event that sustains us through the year.

It was inspiring seeing and hearing the phenomenal people who accepted the awards on Saturday night.

In terms of community, I couldn’t have been more excited at Mark van Jaarsveld and the hierarchy of CAP winning the Mann Made Media Community Service Award. While so many people believe CAP to be a security company that protects people’s homes, I have had the honour of witnessing the crime-fighting work it does.

Although CAP may feature in this newspaper every now and again, the work it does to bring down crime and catch criminals before they do more harm is quite frankly astonishing and mostly done behind the scenes. Nowhere else in the world would you find an organisation quite like this. And you simply don’t find the calibre of professional like Mark and those he works with. We’re so lucky to have them on our side.

Then, we heard from Mervyn Serebro about what inspired him to join Reach for a Dream and give so much hope and pleasure to youngsters for whom life has dealt a devastating blow. What a hero! What a mensch!

Award winner Advocate Carol Steinberg could be defending criminals or innocent people arrested for crimes, but she has chosen to focus on changing our country for the better, ridding it of corruption, hate speech, and so on. What an awesome human being she is!

Then there’s Helen Lieberman, whose life is dedicated to uplifting those so much less fortunate than we are. This humble and dedicated veteran activist challenged more than 900 of us to do better in our lives. She called on us to step out of our comfort zone and be better human beings for those who share our country.

It is always so easy, she reminded us, to focus on our own lives and not worry about anything or anyone else. However, the reality is that if we don’t do something – even something small – to help uplift others, who will? There aren’t a lot of Helen Liebermans out there to do this work. So, if we all played a little part in helping others, we could make a real difference. She sure has.

Each winner was humble. Each winner was talented, dedicated, and passionate about what they do. Each winner was awesome, and each one – other than Pfizer chief Dr Albert Bourla, who won the Special and Extraordinary Award – grew up within our own special community. In fact, many of them went to one of our King David schools.

Are they unique? Yes, but so are we. We all have potential for greatness. It takes dedication and persistence to achieve.

Are their lives all wonderful and without stress and pain? No, they’re human and have hardships like the rest of us. But life is what you make of it.

As our wise SA Jewish Report and Absa Jewish Achiever Award Chairperson Howard Sackstein said in his speech (paraphrasing Shimon Peres), both pessimists and optimists are going to die sometime, but they live such different lives. Like our winners, let’s all strive to live different lives because it means something.

So, we can get depressed, frustrated, and angry with our situation and we can look around us and imagine that everyone is leaving us behind as they emigrate. Or, we can look around and see so many phenomenal people in our community living different lives that matter. Then, even loadshedding doesn’t feel so bad!

On behalf of the SA Jewish Report team, we congratulate our winners, nominees, and everyone who participated in some way in the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards 2022.

Shabbat Shalom!

Peta Krost

Editor