Dan

My great-grandparents, from Lithuania and Latvia, came to South Africa between 1898-1902.  They were some of the earliest Jewish immigrants to South Africa.   They settled in a country town called Paarl, which became a thriving Jewish community.  It has a huge shul and is the strongest of all “country” communities today.  It's about an hour drive from Cape Town.  I was raised in a town not too far from Paarl called Durbanville.

I was raised in a secular household.  We were quite big on Yom Tov.  We went to shul on an occasional Shabbos, but we weren't Shomer Shabbos.  We were very strict about pork and shellfish, but wouldn’t separate meat and milk, nor buy specifically kosher meat.

I had nothing in Jewish education.  I did not go to a Jewish school.  The most I got was whatever I picked up from our occasional going to shul.

Rabbi Naftali Silver (of the Sefardic Synagogue of Cape Town and ReJewvinate)  messaged me during the COVID lockdown.  We stared speaking, I got a link to the TPF website and saw that they offer a paid fellowship, and thought this might be a nice place to start learning about Judaism.  I found the content very interesting and meaningful and continued from there.

It's a different approach to learning , but I like it.  It gives me time to reflect and come to the learning time with the rabbi with my questions already formed.  Then, we can discuss, with the speaker’s inputs, my inputs and the rabbi’s inputs.  It works out well.

Rabbi Kelelmen, particularly his topics about the Chagim.  I find his interpretations and meanings behind them quite interesting.

TPF was the first active Jewish learning I’ve spent time doing.  I started over a year ago, and I still do the weekly podcasts.  Learning the podcasts intrigued me go beyond, to learn more with other rabbis and grow in my yiddishkeit.  (ed. note: it's actually pretty hard to reach Dan because he spends his spare time learning sans phone) I’ve become more cognizant of what I eat, not quite completely Shomer Shabbat, but quite close!  I've grown in the way I act and present myself.

I am hoping to become a CA-a Chartered Accountant (the equivalent of a CPA in the US).  In my yiddishkeit, I hope to continue growing.  I don't know where I'll end up in my journey!

“Take the first initiative, listen to one shiur, do something small, it might inspire you, if you don’t take any action, nothing will come of it.”