Sitting in an artistically infused blue-hued office reflective of classic understated elegance, Sylvia Bielak is a vision in refined business style.

Poised and polite to the point of shyness, her handshake is as firm and direct as her clear gaze, and it's easy to mistakenly assume this businesswoman is president of a fashion conglomerate, or at the very least some famous cosmetics organization.

She isn't. Instead, Bielak heads up Lazar Gourmet Foods, one of Canada's most successful glatt kosher food companies. Her company offers everything from the finest cuts of meats to a detailed line of gourmet food products such as chicken pot pies, shepherd's pie and lasagnas to a line of cooked chicken products delightfully named Little Rachel's after a real little girl...

As the child of a Holocaust survivor, Toronto filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa was already well-read on the subject when he came across Anne Michaels' new novel Fugitive Pieces a decade ago. "This one hit me in a different place," the director recalls between bites of fettucine at Il Gatto Nero, a bistro near his home in Little Italy. "The book was sort of a revelation for me."

He continues: "It touched me really deeply, it was so exquisitely written, moving, profound and poetic. I felt there was a beautiful movie in there."...

Two Recent TCHAT Grads Among Five Area Students Volunteering Overseas for the American Jewish World Sevices

Deborah Cole (TCHAT '05) and Beckie Cherniak ('06) are part of a contingent of five Canadian Jewish students from the Greater Toronto Area joining their American counterparts in sacrificing all modern comforts to assist developing communities in Uganda, Thailand, Honduras and Ghana with American Jewish World Service’s (AJWS) summer volunteer program.

From Volunteering in a Netanya Orphanage to Learning in Yerushalayim, from Community Action in Bat Yam to Tuilim throughout the country, the Shevet  program, Young Judaea’s Year Course in Israel has been a huge hit with Rebecca Cherniak (TCHAT '06).

• Read an interview in the TCHAT Hebrew Language Newspaper
• Read one of Rebecca's letters to her friends near and far describing the Shevet program and its many components activities

Note that from the TCHAT class of 2007, 10 grads have signed up for Shevet / YJ programs for 5768 (2007-08), and 4 additional members of this graduating class plan to be spending the year in Israel on other programs.

Jordan is  spending this year on a program called Shevet run by Young Judaea’s Year Course in Israel. The goal is to teach students from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada about Israel, and to integrate them into Israeli society. There are also Israeli students on the program. The year is broken down into three periods: Jerusalem Study, Israeli Experience and Community Volunteering.

Says Jordan: "Shevet is ideal for me because it is run within an orthodox framework and stresses experiential learning about all different segments of Judaism and Israel through study, field trips and work...."

A generation of TCHAT students recently lost an important friend and mentor: Syd Himel died recently after a short illness.

Syd coached the TCHAT basketball team in the ‘70s.  Known simply as ‘Coach’ or ‘Doc’, he took a group of kids who knew a lot more about Hebrew than ‘hoops’ and he turned them into a force to be reckoned with on the basketball floor.  Even more important, he taught them about discipline, selflessness, courage, leadership, resilience, and respect –  in short, he turned them into menschen.

His philosophy was that what you learned in team sports worked hand in hand with what you learned in school to create the basis for a successful and good life. 

CHAT Graduate Rachael Turkienicz is having a great time filming Uncommon Ground, her new television series on women and spirituality.

“I’m meeting incredible people... Everybody’s bringing such wonderful insights. It seems everyone wants to talk about this,” she enthused last week, having taped five of the 13 themed episodes.

The hour-long program kicks off Sat., Sept. 30, 2006 on CTS at 10 p.m. with guest Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame. Television’s former “Mr. Spock” talked with Turkienicz about his 2000 book Shekhina, a controversial collection of his black-and-white photographs of women, many of them wearing only prayer shawls and tfillin.

There was an amazing rally yesterday at Queen’s Park to scream out ‘Never Again’ and to send a ‘Canada Must Lead’ message to Prime Minister Harper.  The rally paralleled the huge rally in Washington and featured a powerful array of speakers.

One of the amazing things about yesterday’s rally is that it was spearheaded by a small number of high school students – and two of them were current  CHATniks:

• Ben Singer ('06), the President of the Tanenbaum Campus Student Council
• Leora Smith ('06), Vice President of the Richmond Hill Campus

Kol HaKavod to them and to all the many CHATniks who came to support the rally.

In this year's competition, over 40 teams took part -- all but four from Israel (2 CHAT, one USA, one UK).

These were all finalists from regional competitions.  CHAT RH was in the '4-13th place' grouping.  This was the first time ever that a non-Israeli team has taken first place. The CHAT TC and RH teams also took 2nd and 3rd place in the 'Most respected peer group' poll!

Congratulations to:
CHAT TC students:
Chas Firestone, Eric Kaplovich, Joseph Weisgold, Lee Cohean, Jonathan Goldfarb

CHAT RH students (in picture, from left):
 Aaron Pell, Yael Feinberg, Davin Young, Jason Binder, and Rebecca Barmherzig

CHAT Alumni were dominant among the list of presenters at Career Day 2006.  Many classes were represented, from 1966 (Ira Teich) to 2003 (Jan Gorenstein).  Click below to see which of your classmates helped the current crop of CHATniks think about where they may be going in the future.

CHAT Students Roar in Class as the Final Game is Broadcast Live in the School

The tension was huge as CHAT students followed every shot and every steal, and the celebration was even more huge as CHAT students went wild.

The biggest game of the 2006 Sarachek tournament finally arrived Monday afternoon. The gymnasium bleachers were full, and the respective fans were deafening as the game was close throughout.

The Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto Tigers, behind stars Kevin Treger and big-man Jared Mintz, still had a lot to prove despite knocking off the defending champion Young Israel of Century City Panthers and the second-ranked Ramaz Rams en route to the Tier I Final game against the top-ranked Frisch Cougars.  Read More


CHAT Wins with a Buzzer Beater to Advance to the Finals. Read More

By FRANCES KRAFT
CJN Staff Reporter

Despite a double curriculum of Jewish and general studies and – for some – the drive to do well in their last year before university, a group of students at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto have spent many after-school hours this year preparing for major competitions in law and business.

CHAT, a first-time competitor, won a combined total of 35 awards.

The team stood in second place at the OBA event, and Grade 12 student Philip Pollack won the crown attorney award at the York Region competition.

by Frances Kraft

Acol Dor, a Sudanese-born physician, recently described her experiences for a rapt audience CHAT’s Tanenbaum.

Dor is the co-director of Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan (CASTS). She joined Danny Richmond, assistant national program director of Canadian Young Judaea and director of the organization’s Va’ad Tikun Olam, and Jonathan Laski, director of media for STAND Canada (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) to speak at a school-wide assembly organized by a committee of students as part of the school’s annual “awareness week.”