shana tovah!

Shana tovah, family and friends! I hope you are all having meaningful holidays and that this time allows you to reflect on the past year and consider your hopes and desires for the coming year. Tonight my friends and I made a huge Rosh Hashanah feast at our house. There were around 20 of us and it was a great time. We shared Jewish traditions with our non-Jewish friends who came to join us. My friend Loreal made AMAZING challah again. She is really talented. No joke, she makes the best challah I have ever had. She is a legend on our program. We also made my Nanni's chicken, potatoes, cous cous, salad, apple crisp, and had lots of apples and honey. Loreal made an extra challah and hid it so we can have challah French toast for dinner tomorrow night.

It is weird that it is already Wednesday night, that it is already Rosh Hashanah, and that October is a few days away. Time has flown by and it is hard to believe that I've been here for almost three months. Each day in Cape Town is better than the one before it, and in this period of reflection during the yamim noraim (the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) I am finding a lot to think about and meditate upon. It is nice having this time carved out to do it (although I have been doing a lot of it since being here).

Today in my discussion section for my class on social justice and inequality, my TA read us the following from a paper he wrote with some classmates for his masters:

It is important to note that we must craft solutions that are relevant to our

Southern African context, which has of course been shaped by the rest of the world.

Mbigi (2007) describes four world-view paradigms and their applicability to our work.

The European North, characterised by the scientific, rational “I am because I think

I am” Cartesian world view, which helps plan ahead and vision the future.

The Eastern Asian, characterised by the “I am because I improve” towards

spiritual perfection, which pushes every individual towards consistently innovating better

solutions.

The Western American, characterised by “I am because I, the individual hero,

dream and do”, which turns personal vision, dreams and courage into enterprise.

The African, characterised by ubuntu - “I am because we are; I can only be a

person through others”, which contributes a completely different way of doing business.

Ubuntu philosophy and practice is about listening to, empathising with and persuading

the other, all to serve the needs of the community. Individual goals become automatically

achieved. In an age of interconnectedness, in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu,

ubuntu will be “the gift that Africa is going to give the world” (Mbigi, 2007: 297).

I thought this was so beautiful that I asked him to send me the article after class. In thinking about it now, I realize that so much of my experience here has been about ubuntu. From making the meal tonight - each one of us putting forth our strengths in order to create a delicious event to share together - to getting ready to go out to helping each other through the homesickness...it is all about serving the needs of the community. My community here is such a special one, and sitting down to break bread tonight (Loreal's delicious challah - the best bread ever) only affirmed how Africa is giving us the gift of understanding the interconnectedness of us all.

To a sweet new year filled with lots of love, happiness, excitement, and growth...shana tovah!

Talia