Superb care in a setting family

Looking for a care home for yourself or a loved one? Then you could do no better than to join us as part of our Springdene family. Unlike other care homes, which are often part of large corporations, we are a family business. And we’re still run by the same family that founded it more than 50 years ago. New residents at Springdene can be sure of a warm reception. All our homes – Spring Grove in Hampstead, Spring Lane in Muswell Hill and Springview in Enfield – are rated as good by the Care Quality Commission.

Residents enjoy hotel-style luxury, with their own spacious room, complete with full en-suite facilities, personal telephone and wi-fi. There are three delicious meals a day, with a varied choice of menus.

And there are lots of regular activities, including quizzes, short stories, art competitions and poetry readings, live-streamed concerts and film-showings on a big screen, as well as walks in delightful gardens.

We’ve a great team, o ering wonderful care and everyone is brilliantly looked after.

As our motto says:

Life is for living

candicekrieger@googlemail.com

When it comes to travel, jetsetting – or make that ‘set jetting’ – has become serious business. People are being influenced by what they see on screen. Think The Beach (Thailand), Lord of the Rings (New Zealand) and, more recently, The White Lotus (Hawaii and Sicily).

Set-jetting has grown in popularity in recent years but looks set to soar this year alongside our viewing habits, thanks to the popularity of streaming shows on platforms like Netflix and Amazon.

“There is a rise in ‘film’ destinations,” says luxury travel expert Rebecca Masri. “Set-jetting destinations will include the

Four Seasons Hotel Taormina and Four Seasons Resort Maui (The White Lotus), Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas (Oceans 11), Hotel Daniele (The Tourist) and La Mamounia Marrakech (Inventing Anna).”

While set-jetting is not a new phenomenon, Expedia research shows streamed movies and TV programmes are now the top sources of travel inspiration (40 percent), overtaking the influence of social media (31 percent). And the small screen is now considered on a par with recommendations from friends and family when it comes to travel inspiration.

Masri is the founder of Little Emperors, a private members’ hotel club, which counts the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton and Shangri-La among its portfolio. Donna Bengio joined the products team in 2020.

Founded in 2009, the company had a record year for bookings last year and Masri expects this trend to continue in 2023. Masri and Bengio say travel is now exceeding pre-pandemic levels, with millennials replacing baby boomers as their primary clientele – 93 percent of members are under 50. “By 2030, Gen Z will be the largest customer group for luxury brands,” says Bengio.

“It’s not only the way we communicate and share that has changed – values and work ethics have shifted. The generation raised on individualism, independence and Instagram seeks authenticity and shareability. Unlike their predecessors, millennials are less tied to the benchmarks of work and family. With remote o ces on the rise, family duties arriving later in life and the nomadic lifestyle paving the way, wealthy millennials seem keen to tap into that sense of freedom.”

Little Emperors o ers its 30,000-plus members access to preferential rates and guaranteed leisure and corporate benefits at 4,000 exclusive luxury hotels worldwide.

Masri says luxury travel has taken a different turn. “Millennials want to be pioneers. Over half of the a uent millennial travellers believe luxury is about discovery and adventure (experiential travel), and 70 percent want to learn from the cultures they visit. Six Senses and its growing portfolio has seen an increase of over 40 percent in bookings from our clients based on its unique programmes and ability to embrace local cultures. I was recently in Six Senses in Shaharut in the middle of the desert in Israel, surrounded by kibbutzim, with a strong sense of place. With so many new openings in valleys, mountains, deserts and bays as well as cities, its philosophy of disconnecting to reconnect and focus on sustainability and wellness resonates well with our members.”

But luxury comes at a cost and hotel prices are at record highs, with leisure destinations seeing the biggest increases. Little Emperors has seen the average daily room rate increase by 29 percent since last year, and 14 percent since pre-pandemic levels.

Bengio explains: “This is partially owing to pent-up demand with people desperate to travel after being restricted for so long as well as a surge in delayed trips and group bookings like weddings and team bonding.” Exchange rates, labour shortages, knock-on inflation costs and higher petrol prices are also all having an impact.

To make travel more a ordable and accessible, Littler Emperors advises booking in advance. “The pandemic led to the shortest lead-times we have ever seen – a logistical challenge for us,” Masri says. “Now people are fearful of rising prices and actually getting rooms. We have seen a 20 percent increase in advance bookings. People are also booking shorter stays – prices are so high people want to stay in the same hotels, but may only budget for shorter stays.

“And, much to our delight, using a travel agent is another cost-saving tip. Many people see travel agents as being more expensive. We see ourselves as a new breed. We like to be called advisers, or in our case disrupters, who no longer charge hourly rates for advice, but a small annual fee, easy to recuperate in just one booking, and get our clients freebies. One of our most important perks is upgrades, often guaranteed at time of booking.”

As for other trends, Masri and Bengio cite sustainable travel, with 70 percent of members considering ethics and sustainability to be important factors when staying at a hotel.

A former Goldman Sachs banker, Masri was awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to charity. Aged 15, she and a friend organised a play to raise funds for a bed for the paediatric intensive care unit at St Mary’s Hospital. She has since taken on work for Israeli charity Afikim and the Tree of Life, a non-profit foundation she founded.

Bengio, who has an MBA from Tel Aviv University, has experience working in a multifamily o ce and launching a second-hand e-commerce business. She has been involved in Jewish organisations since she was a teenager. She planned events for the Jewish community of Madrid, founded a Jewish organisation for international students in Boston and now co-chairs Young BFAMI.

The average person will speak 123 million words in a lifetime. But what if there was a limit?

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, a play by Sam Steiner that opened recently in the West End starring Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman, imagines a world where we’re forced to say less. It’s about what we say and how we say it; about the things we can only hear in the silence; about dead cats, activism, eye contact, and, well... lemons.

If we each had a daily word limit, would we have to really think hard to ensure we always say what we mean and mean what we say?

In Judaism, the power of speech is incontrovertible: the Torah begins with God speaking and the physical world coming into existence. What distinguishes humans from the other creations is that God blew the breath of life into us. Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation and commentary, renders “living being” as “speaking soul”, inferring that speech is God’s unique gift to us.

The Hebrew word davar means both ‘a word’ and ‘a thing’, implying that what is said has a concrete significance and so we are conscious that our words create our reality.

For this reason, the Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan, 18391933) dedicated his life to teaching us to be responsible for what we say, as it is clear that words have the capacity to build as well as to destroy.

In parshat Bo, in order to ensure that we always remember the Exodus from Egypt, we are instructed to speak about it with our children and to tell our national story to the following generation. In addition, the mitzvah of tefillin is intended to act as a physical reminder of how God miraculously redeemed us from slavery and also “in order that God’s teaching may be in your mouth” (Shemot 13:9).

On a literal level, we can understand that the intent here is for us to verbalise Torah daily so that we not only learn its lessons but develop familiarity with it, making it as much part of our routine as eating. However, HaKtav VeHaKabalah (Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, 19th century) o ers a deeper insight by suggesting that “in your mouth” means gener- ating a mindset where the Torah’s words are important to us. There is an expectation that, among all the things we speak of regularly, we see God’s teachings as at least as valuable and worth talking about.

A Kabbalist idea holds that each of us has a finite number of words to use in our lifetime, and if we kept that in mind every time we open our mouths, perhaps we would be more careful in choosing the ones that come out. At the very least, we know that when we speak words of Torah or discuss our heritage and tradition, those words are the best use of our allocation.

BY RABBI MARK GOLDSMITH EDGWARE AND HENDON REFORM SYNAGOGUE

philanthropist in the Jewish community, as the Sugar Wing at King Solomon High School tells us, and is often joined as a judging sidekick by Claude Littner, also Jewish.

Then, periodically, there are the Jewish candidates who we all hope will do well, or even win, without embarrassing us too much with their actions or attitudes, as if they are our own cousins making cringeworthy speeches at weddings.

chapter 17, some 40 years before he will eventually take over from Moses.

I have enjoyed watching The Apprentice ever since 2005. I sit through the crass initial interviews, cringing with the nation at the pronouncements of the various candidates but gradually feeling I get to know them and to care for their success.

There is always plenty of Jewish interest in the show. Alan Sugar is a

The premise of the show is a principle that drives many of the key narratives in the Bible: the young person finding and being guided by a mentor in order to make a success of themselves.

Just as Lord Sugar becomes to his eventual protégés, so was Moses to Joshua, whom he guided to be his eventual successor from early in the Torah narrative.

Joshua first appears in Exodus

The priest Eli guided Samuel to become the king-making prophet of Israel from a very early age. The prophet Elijah calls his successor Elisha to be his own apprentice, finding him originally as a young farm boy (1 Kings Chapter 19). The King Solomon of Alan Sugar’s favourite school was apprenticed by his father King David and they even ruled Israel together for a time (1 Kings 1:32-40).

The mentor process is very important in recruitment and training for today’s rabbinate. One of the proudest moments in my life was when Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein placed his hands on my shoulders at my semicha and used the words of Moses: “Be strong and of good courage,” to induct me into the rabbinate.

When I was a teenager, he had encouraged and guided me to

As Lord Sugar becomes to his eventual protégés, so Moses was to Joshua become a cheder assistant and youth leader and then, in my mid-twenties, to train at Leo Baeck College.

The Apprentice may indeed be a brutal reality television show which shows no mercy to those who do not measure up, but its principle of mentorship and guidance from our previous generation is the time-honoured way that the Jewish community passes on its skills, values and leadership.