Jewish Life Digital Edition February 2013 | Page 3

FROM THE TEAM FROM THE EDITOR WWW.JEWISHLIFE.CO.ZA WELCOME CREDITS PUBLISHER & MANAGING DIRECTOR A h, the Simcha issue. What’s not to love? From romantic proposals (pg 44), a miraculous recovery (pg 58), a 70th anniversary (pg 50) and welcoming a newly Jewish family (pg 52), to life’s little joys (pg 48) and the mixed emotions (pg 54) all these things bring, our readers have really opened up their hearts and shared their poignant moments with us. And let’s not forget Purim around the corner, and all the excitement and joy of this special holiday. Aren’t our cover girls gorgeous? Thank you to the delicious Swartz girls for our magnificent Purim cover. We’d love to showcase your little fireman, ballerina, princess, policeman, punk rocker or Purim character all dressed up and ready to party, so please email your pictures to [email protected] and we’ll post them on our Facebook page and put them up on the digital mag at www.jewishlife.co.za. Martyn Samuels [email protected] EDITOR Paula Levin [email protected] OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Linda Superfain [email protected] FEATURES WRITER Chandrea Serebro COPY EDITOR/PROOFREADER Heidi Hurwitz ART DIRECTOR Janine Wait [email protected] PHOTOGRAPHER Ilan Ossendryver EDS PHOTOGRAPH: ILAN OSSENDRYVER If you haven’t yet checked out Jewish Life’s digital edition, go straight to the site and subscribe for free, and you could win a two-night stay at 54 on Bath, Rosebank’s luxury boutique hotel. There’s loads of extra content in the same easy-to-read format you know and love. If you don’t know how to make your own challah, be sure to check out Sharon Lurie’s cooking demo (pg 18), with her inimitable humour, leopard print apron and super-bling blender. Then print out her foolproof recipe and try it at home. One of my favourite stories online has to be the Ultimate Burger Showdown (pg 19), where Dan Chaitowitz goes on a burger tasting rampage across all the kosher establishments. The pictures will have you salivating and it’s a scrumptiously good read. Back to Purim, the holiday best summed up as “they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat”, as is much of Jewish history! But beneath the glibness lies a frightening reality, one that grips me with even more anxiety now that I am a mother of two Jewish boys, yarmulkas perched precariously on their crowns, tzitzit flailing as they tear around town. The perfect world we dream of, where the brotherhood of mankind lovingly and harmoniously celebrates a peaceful world dedicated to G-dliness, is not yet a reality, and there are forces out there, in each generation, bent on the destruction of the Jewish voice of morality. My seven-year-old son had a party at the war museum recently, where he discovered that six million Jews had been murdered in the last World War, a fact I had not been ready to share with him. It’s a crazy world to be bringing up children, and yet, that is what G-d wants of us, to keep trying to repair this broken world, to do our bit to bring Him into human consciousness and action. And as the Purim story reveals (pg 10), He’s always there, guiding and directing every event for the ultimate good, even when He is completely hidden and things seem inscrutable. May we all find strength in our faith and merit to celebrate, as did the Jews of Shushan, the revelation of G-d’s closeness to us all. [email protected] DIGITAL MANAGER David Blumenau [email protected] CONTRIBUTORS Nick