"If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, in stead of something for someone, you'll end up doing nothing for nobody"

Charity, in the widest sense of the word, is so crucial, so important and yet so unbelievably simple to do. 

Whether it is finance, time, support, guidance, care or even just a little attention, whatever you give to another person at their time of need shows them that they are not alone and there is some good that will find them when they need it most.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I was sent the following link on Facebook. http://theviralvault.com/homeless-child-sat-outside-freezi…/

The link was to a short video clip that showed a social experiment in NYC, where a young teenager wearing nothing but a ripped t-shirt and ripped jeans was outside in the winter cold, grasping only a black bin-bag and a sign that asked for help. He was outside on that same bit of pavement for roughly about two hours, with the world passing him by. 

You can see that some of the people passing him were visibly moved by his presence in what must have been their otherwise ordinary day or routine journey. You can see the occasional individual pausing, thinking about doing something to help, before then walking on their way. And of course you can also see people clearly shielding their eyes from what is truly a painful picture to see.

Then, just as you start to question the lack of humanity in this clip, a man walks up to the teenager, sits beside him, talks to him, and then on hearing of the teen's (scripted) story, the man removes his winter jacket, places it around the teen and tries to offer him, comfort support and warmth.

However, what makes this all the more remarkable, is that the man who comes to help the teen is in fact homeless himself! For me, there is one poignant moment above all others. At that moment, the man tells the teen "and me being the older homeless person, we got to look out for one another. Maybe I can show you the ropes....you know, I messed up in life but you're young; you have a good chance with life..."

I dare you to watch this clip and not be moved! 

So go out there, find some small way that you can make some small difference to someone that needs your help or to a cause that you believe in - find some small way to make this world a warmer, brighter, friendlier place. It doesn't necessarily need to be helping someone homeless (although it's definitely a great thing to do), or in dire straits. It could be something far more simply, like just being there when someone 'needs an ear' or a shoulder to cry on. 

In JK Simmons' 2015 Oscar acceptance speech, he told the world that was listening  to "Call your mom, call your dad. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call ‘em. Don’t text. Don’t email. Call them on the phone. Tell ‘em you love ‘em, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you." This is a great place to start. It costs nothing and it means the world. Or you could go for a coffee with a friend who seems down. If you're looking for somewhere to start then look to those around you, see who might need that friendly smile. You can never imagine what good something so simple and so ordinary can do.

And whatever you do, do it only for the fact that there is someone out there, somewhere, who is in desperate need of what only you can offer right here and now - no matter how big or small you might think that to be. Do it with love and compassion. Do it with the same love and compassion that you would want if you were in someone else's 'less fortunate' position. 

Our compassion and our ability to care for another (no matter how good/bad our present situation may be) is one of our greatest gifts in this world.

If we help to save a life, its as if we have saved an entire world, and while we may not finish the task entirely, it is absolutely our responsibility to start trying. We absolutely should. Without question!

How does one relate to the idea of a number, even more so a large number? On a recent visit to Auschwitz Birkenau, the guide for our group posed this exact question. He challenged the group to make the number ‘six million’ personal. Needless to say, we all struggled. He then said something else that, almost in a switch, helped us to begin to comprehend it.

Such a number is too big to take in, it is too large a number to visualise. Instead, we should try to think of a loved one. Just one single person. Maybe a parent, a sibling or perhaps a partner. The guide told us to close our eyes and think of that person and then think of another. Now with two people, think of every member of your immediate family. Now, from there, think of a friend and then a couple more friends, and then some more beyond that. We were then told to continue adding a person, a friend, a family member or even an acquaintance until, once again, we lose our focus of the number through a haze of faces. This really didn’t take long at all.

He said that individually we will never be able to comprehend such a number – this is a task too great for one person alone. Instead it can only be done together, as a people. He explained that the closest we can come to this individually is by thinking of our own immediate circles – of their faces – and know that each of these faces represents one of the souls brutally taken from this world.

Today is the international Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year, the theme for the day is ‘journeys’. I am here because of the brave and perilous journey my paternal grandfather took in order to escape Poland.

The Jewish people have survived against unimaginable odds, through thousands of years and against countless backdrops of persecution and oppression. However, with the help of the Almighty and because of the many journeys that they took, and the many personal sacrifices they made along the way, the Jewish People have survived. We are survivors.

My Zaida (Yiddish for grandfather), made great sacrifices at great personal costs and with great consequences that haunted him for many years after. However, as a man of great strength and heart, he took that journey and ultimately, it saved his life, brought him to England, it saw him meet my Grandmother and start a new family with the birth of my father and then my uncle. His journey continued through my father and mother, uncle and aunt, and now it continues through me, my sister and my two cousins. We are the legacy of his journey. We carry his journey on into the future.

As Jews, we are all connected through the ages. We all undergo a journey to ensure that the Jewish people continue and we all play a part in taking our collective story from the past to the future. For some generations, that journey is a hard and arduous task. For others, its path is less strenuous and less gruelling. And, of course, for some it is a journey full of joy and celebration. Thank G-d I have not faced the horrors that my Zaida suffered but while he is no longer with us, learning about his life and his journey is a constant source of fascination, guidance, strength and pride.

I love him and miss him dearly. I hope that he would be proud of us all, but more importantly, I hope he would be proud to see what his journey has produced, in spite of the hardships and against all the odds, and to see how his family is flourishing and taking his story through into future generations.

May the lives of all those who were lost in the Holocaust be a blessed memory and may the memories of all those who survived forever be a blessing to us all.

International Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 – 27 January 2014

For more information on HMD 2014, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NeqH4QCI60 

These are a few photos from my recent Young Professionals Trip to Poland, and the Survivor, Dov Landau, who we had the great fortune to meet along the way.

A piece written for the ORT JUMP programme in 2013...

One of the first mentors I ever had used to say: “your journey in life is of your own making. You alone can shape it. If you are passionate about what you want, if you know how to make it work and if you have the dedication to see it through tough times, then you can achieve anything you want.”

I’m paraphrasing of course, but there isn’t a week that goes by where words spoken to that effect don’t echo in the back of my mind. Even today, this idea greatly influences the manner in which I approach my challenges and they still fill me with confidence and belief.

Such is the effect that a mentor can have on those who seek their guidance. I know this first-hand and I have seen, on so many occasions, what can be achieved when investing time and effort in others is seen as both a privilege and a responsibility.

However, spending my first year as a mentor myself has opened my mind to something else that is truly remarkable: the insatiable ability of school students to dream big. While I only left school roughly 11 years ago, I am beginning to see that all too quickly we replace these dreams with their smaller versions – or what we consider to be more realistic.

But it is precisely in the realm of the unrealistic that the magic happens. Worlds have been turned by the power of dreaming big. 

No matter how one personally defines success, it always requires imagination to carve out a path towards achieving it and so too it demands determination in order to keep your balance along the bumpy way. Yet when someone combines imagination and drive with knowledge, then they have the potential to achieve truly wondrous things. This is why I 
believe mentoring to be so vitally important. 

In this particular programme, mentoring is a way of supplementing the bold and vibrant enthusiasm that these students have, untarnished by doubt or cynicism, with the experience that they understandably lack – and the knowledge that experience brings.

This year, I have been extremely lucky to have shared the time of two very talented and imaginative students. Both have passion and ambition, and both are keenly aware of what is truly important to them. I hope that our conversations will have given them some confidence to go forward and achieve the goals that they have set for themselves. I am 
in no doubt that if they believe in themselves, they will go far.

All mentors were once beginners, but by having stood on the shoulders of giants, it is now on their shoulders that this next 
generation will steady themselves. And it is from the experiences of their mentors, that these mentees will garner the strength and courage to dream big and to believe that they truly can “achieve anything they want”.

For more information on ORT JUMP, please see www.ortjump.co.uk

Yesterday was Yom HaShoah, the day on which the Jewish community around the world observes a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust.

Over 70 years ago, the unthinkable was made possible because the citizens of so many European countries fell silent and turned their faces from what was happening. The world took too long to act.

And yet today, the Jewish people still exist. 

Some survived through miracles and others through a stubborn refusal to abandon life. With nothing to sustain them but hope, this group of incredible individuals ensured not just their own survival, but the survival of the Jewish people. They returned from the edge of the abyss, cradling what was left of our way of life and scarred by the separation from everything, and everyone, that they had lost.

So now a burden of responsibility falls to us. It is up to this generation and the next, and then all those that follow, to carry the memory of the victims and the evils that befell them. The number of living witnesses continues to lessen each year and so those memories have been entrusted to us, the next generation, as a sacred responsibility.
 
Indeed, it is the responsibility of every human being, each in his or her generation, Jew and non-Jew alike, to take that memory and re-affirm the pledge that was forged from the flames of the Holocaust: that we will never forget and we will never again stand by, blinded and in silence.

Yesterday, as Jews, we remembered. We remembered the victims and what happened to our past. We remembered our families. But today is different: today it is our obligation to move from remembering our past to honouring it. In my (humble) opinion, this is where the real significance of any holocaust memorial lies. Like the story of Passover, this chapter today becomes a story of hope, a story of tomorrow.

To remember is to personalise and to make it real. It is to pause and reflect, to be alone with ones thoughts and to acknowledge the pain, the suffering and the sacrifice. However, to honour the many victims – Jews and non-Jews alike – is to live a life of purpose and of meaning. In whatever way we each understand that, and however we interpret the lessons of this dark and bloody time, it is up to each of us to make sure that we take each day as an opportunity to do great things. Each day is a chance to make a difference.

To honour their memory is to spend every day, not in the shadow of the past, but using the past to shape a better, more just future. By living our lives according to the principles of humanity, we move humanity forward to such a place where the unthinkable is truly unthinkable. To stand up to injustice, to stand up for the bullied and to offer the hand of friendship to those that are in need is to restore our faith in humanity and to learn the lessons of this dark and troublesome past. 

May the memory of all those that perished, and all those that survived be blessed and may we all come to be a blessing to their memory.