Faces of Akiva

Bella Widman
Akiva Grandparent
“… I came to Canada 26 years ago following my children…  I grew up in a Jewish home in a tiny city in the mountains where I lived just outside of Rio, Brazil. My parents always taught me that being Jewish was important but it was not easy.  We had to travel over an hour whenever we needed meat to the closest Kosher butcher, because everything needed to be kosher in our home…  My husband and the other Jews in the city used to daven every Shabbat in a spare conference room in the local hotel, if it was available.  Then one day, my husband said “Enough is enough, we need to have a shul” and he raised the money to build a tiny synagogue for us to have in our city… At some point when I was little, I had to go to a non-Jewish school because there were no Jewish schools available and it made my mother very sad.  Now, when I see my two grandsons learning in a Jewish school, it makes me so happy. It means so much to me and I am so proud of them.”