Tag Archives: Columbia University

Jew of the Week: Sivan Borowich-Ya’ari

Saving Africa With Israeli Technology

Sivan Borowich-Ya'ari

Sivan Borowich-Ya’ari

Sivan Borowich-Ya’ari was born in Israel to an Algerian-Jewish father and Tunisian-Jewish mother. She was raised in France, but returned to Israel to serve in the army. After her service, Ya’ari moved to the United States to pursue higher education. While completing a Master’s at Columbia University, she went on an internship to Senegal with the United Nations Development Program, working to bring electrical generators to poor villages. Inspired by the terrible living conditions that she saw, Ya’ari took it upon herself to make a positive change in Africa. Soon after, she started her own project to bring solar-powered electricity to a Tanzanian village. In 2008, Ya’ari founded a non-profit organization, originally called Jewish Heart for Africa, and now Innovation: Africa. Its mission: making Africa a better place, and doing it with modern Israeli technology. Since then, her organization has helped bring light and electricity, food and water, education and medical care to over 450,000 people in Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi. Over 250,000 children have been able to get vaccinated thanks to solar refrigerators provided by Innovation: Africa. Ya’ari works together with impoverished villages to bring them the basic infrastructure that they need. Her efforts have stimulated business opportunities, wider education, and better health. The organization maintains its promise to contribute 100% of donations for its causes, a part of which goes to develop novel Israeli technologies. Last fall, Ya’ari was honoured with the United Nation’s Innovation Award.

Words of the Week

You speak of all that you need, but you say nothing of what you are needed for.
– Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi

Jew of the Week: Elie Wiesel

Messenger to Mankind

Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

Eliezer Wiesel (b. 1928) was born in Romania in a home that regularly spoke Hungarian, German, Romanian, and Yiddish. During the Holocaust he suffered in multiple labour and concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Auschwitz, and lost both parents and a younger sister. After the war, he resettled in Paris, studied at the Sarbonne, and worked as a journalist. In 1949, Wiesel became the Paris correspondent (later the international correspondent) for Yediot Ahronot. Though originally not wanting to write at all about the horrors of the Holocaust, he was convinced by a friend and published Night in 1958 – a shortened French version of his 900-page memoir in Yiddish. Though it took a while to hit the mainstream, the book now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every year and has been translated into 30 languages. Wiesel has subsequently authored many more publications, and has become an internationally-renowned speaker. In 1986, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts against racism, violence, and genocide, and was called a “messenger to mankind”. He has also won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and was knighted, among many other awards. He has even been nominated as President of Israel, but did not wish to take up the post. Wiesel has taught at Boston and Columbia Universities, the City University of New York, and served as a visiting scholar at Yale. He has spent a great deal of his life as a political activist for international causes. He stood strongly against apartheid South Africa and raised support for intervention during the Bosnian genocide, and more recently in Darfur. He has assisted the plight of Kurds, Native Americans, Argentinian Desaparecidos, as well as Soviet and Ethiopian Jewry. Wiesel remains a vocal supporter of Israel, and Jerusalem as its undivided capital. For the past 58 years, he has lived in the US and to this day has authored 57 books.

UPDATE: Sadly, Elie Wiesel passed away on July 2, 2016.

Words of the Week

For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture – and not a single time in the Koran.
– Elie Wiesel