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www.jewishnews.co.uk

Jewish News 29 April 2021

News / Wedding joy / Tech support

A newly-wed teacher was cheered on by her pupils on her special day after her family in Australia could not attend the wedding in person, writes Joshua Salisbury. Leora Rudansky, a teacher at the Independent Jewish Day School in Hendon, married Ben Gordon, the head of Jewish Studies at Yavneh College. Because of coronavirus, Rudansky’s family could not attend from Down Under, so her Year 4 pupils decided to help her celebrate by lining the street with balloons and banners. “My students were so invested in this wedding. They learned all the

traditional songs for the wedding and sheva brachot so they could sing with us,” said the delighted 29-year-old. “Having them and the staff at school so excited about our milestone really brought that extra bit of simcha and ruach to the celebrations.” The couple got engaged in September, making plans for a December wedding, hoping Leora’s family could join them. However, because of the lockdowns, the day was pushed to April.

“It was such a difficult decision,” added Rudansky, who met Gordon through a close friend shortly after her move to the UK. “I was torn between wanting to marry the love of my life and having my parents at the wedding. We wanted to wait, but the problem was that we didn’t know how long we’d be waiting.” The bride’s relatives attended the ceremony over Zoom, which

Photo by Dina Erlich

Pupils help make teacher’s big day Leora and Ben’s wedding took place in the groom’s parents’ garden

took place in Gordon’s parents’ garden in Stanmore, with a screen showing the bride’s family behind her. Her parents held their own party in Australia, which allowed for more attendees than the London wedding.

Rudansky students also held a party in school as they watched the ceremony over Zoom and staff and pupils made the pair a sheva brachot celebration in the school hall. Yavneh College also organised a celebration.

DIGITAL TEAM DELIVERS 3,000 LAPTOPS TO YOUNG PEOPLE A Jewish technology expert has teamed up which to work while being educated at home with Saracens rugby club to provide more than during the second lockdown. Featuring Saracens and England rugby 3,000 laptops to young people working at home star Maro Itoje, the Digital Divide camduring the pandemic. The project was devised after research paign has provided students with laptops showed almost two million children across the through a partnership with the club’s founand technology partner UK didPAGE not have adequate to a device on dation, HALF ADVERT JANaccess 2020:Layout 1 09/01/2020 16:04Bloomberg, Page 1

WWCS, which is run by Jewish CEO Marc Lester. It has so far donated, cleaned and distributed 3,124 laptops since the beginning of this year, with an average of 50 handed out per day. Lester, who is based near Brent Cross, transformed his firm’s office space into

a production line for device testing, wiping and cleaning. “This is such an important cause,” he said. “At a time when the IT industry has thrived due to the huge increase in remote working, it is only right we should be giving back in some way and this seemed like the ideal opportunity.”

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