DAFKADOTCOM
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • OUR VALUES
  • CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES
  • CONTACT
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • OUR VALUES
  • CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES
  • CONTACT
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

MANY ISSUES. MORE VOICES.

1/12/2023 1 Comment

A Living Archive for South African Jewry

by Kathrine Garrun

Kathrine Garrun looks at the role that community archives -- including digital archives -- play in telling the story of South African Jewish life. 

ON Sunday, 18 April 2021, a devastating fire on Table Mountain spread rapidly to the University of Cape Town (UCT), and soon ignited the roof of the historic Jagger Reading Room, engulfing the treasured African Studies Library. The fire resulted in irreparable loss of historical collections. Although also situated on upper campus of UCT, and perilously close to the flames, the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, and its archival store, was untouched by the fire.

​Such a loss would have been unimaginable. Our collections -- personal papers, congregational and organisational records, oral histories, and photographic materials -- tell the story of South African Jewish life. They not only connect South African Jews to their past but are crucial repositories for any future research on the community and South African Jewry. 
Picture
Kathrine Garrun suggests that South African Jewry have been particularly committed to preserving the community's history.

Read More
1 Comment

11/28/2022 5 Comments

How the South African press reported news of the holocaust

by dmitri abrahams

Dmitri Abrahams looks at how the South African media reported on the Holocaust between April and November 1945. He suggests that the different reportage reflected not only the ethos of the publication and their stance on World War II, but also the deeply polarised thinking of the papers’ respective readership -- with regards to both the war as well as what was happening back home in South Africa.  

PictureA cartoon from The Rand Daily Mail (1945) lampooning DF Malan's attempts to deny Nazi atrocities.
THE liberation of concentration camps in 1945 and the revelation of atrocities committed by Nazi Germany caused major upset in South African society.
​
As a part of my dissertation on Holocaust memory in South Africa I analysed how the South African press reported on and understood the liberation of the concentration camps. The liberation of the concentration camps by Allied forces happened during an uncoordinated, chaotic period in which information emerged piecemeal. The press had already reported on the persecution and mass murder of European Jewry from at least 1942 so when the news of the liberation of the camps reached South African shores, they had some background with which to engage with the topic which suddenly flooded the pages of their daily and weekly newspapers. 


Read More
5 Comments

10/4/2022 0 Comments

Post Chalmers to Poland: ‘making sense’ of violent history

by marina geldenhuys

Marina Geldenhuys reflects on her visceral response during a recent Holocaust study tour to Poland. Drawing from her research which looked at an apartheid-era 'death farm' in the Eastern Cape, Marina suggests that we instinctually search for signs and evidence of violence in places where violence occurred.

THIS last July I visited Poland as a participant in the Poland Holocaust Study Tour 2022, organised by the Austrian Service Abroad, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. Although the Holocaust is not my area of study, I had spent my honours year absorbed in memory studies of violent histories. In particular my research looked at apartheid security police violence at Post Chalmers, a ‘death farm’ in the Eastern Cape.
"We gathered for prayer at the grave of 800 murdered children and learnt that the executions started in the summer of 1942. Despair rose in my throat as I realised that, at the moment they died, the children saw what we were seeing, their minds probably attempting to reconcile the glade's beauty with its horror". 

Read More
0 Comments

6/21/2022 1 Comment

Observance and environmentalism: Being a Jewish South African Tree hugger

by ILANA STEin

Ilana Stein reflects on what Judaism says about our responsibility to the planet and explores environmental awareness in the South African Jewish community. 

​​I always wanted to be a game ranger. When I began working in conservation tourism, I discovered a world filled with people who discussed rhino numbers and elephant footprints with an intensity that inspired me. I was thrilled to be part of this group of people who, when faced with habitat destruction, extinction of species and environmental degradation, would unequivocally declare “not on our watch.” But as a practicing Jew I found myself asking whether Judaism explicitly cares about the environment.
"Despite the growth of the green movement in global Jewish circles, the South African Jewish community has lagged behind".

Read More
1 Comment

5/18/2022 1 Comment

Two Litvak communities: South Africa and Ireland

​by yanky fachler

With both the South African and Irish Jewish communities being predominantly Litvak in origin, Yanky Fachler explores the commonalities between these two communities.   

Picture90% of South African and 80% of Irish Jewry have Litvak roots.
​If my Litvak great-grandfather Jacob Becker, after whom I am named, had not spent a year in Pretoria in the late 19th century and not brought back to Lithuania a pocketful of South African passports, my grandfather, Sam Becker, would have been unable to use his South African passport to escape from Nazi Germany for Britain prior to World War II. As a result, I lived in England for the first 25 years of my life. I then lived in Israel for the next 25 years. Moving to Ireland a quarter of a century ago suddenly made me mindful of my own – and Ireland’s – Litvak heritage. When I was researching my book, Kaleidoscope: Key characters who helped shape the Irish-Jewish community [1], something that Dublin-born Max Nurock, a former Israeli ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, once said resonated. Nurock had stated that “Ireland’s Jews are a community founded largely by an incomparable generation of Litvak pioneers.”

"No other Jewish community in the world mirrors the South African community more than Ireland’s Jewish community. The size of the two communities as they evolved might be very different, but the essential Litvak nature of both communities has led to striking parallels". 

Read More
1 Comment

3/24/2022 0 Comments

Bearing the Chosen Children: Continuity and the South African Jewish Community

by gabriella saven


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african Jewish community


Considering global and local Jewish communal concerns around 'continuity', ​Gabriella Saven argues that we need to encourage dialogue and inclusion when it comes to reproductive experiences, particularly amongst those considered to be on the ‘fringes’ of the South African Jewish community.​

PictureThe JCSSA found the cost of a Jewish education impacts the decision to have more children in 39% of households of school-age children.
Babies are always on my mind. Not because I have any, or plan on having one soon, but because as a young South African Jewish woman whose identity revolves around family and community, conversations around reproduction can feel ubiquitous.

My Honours thesis explored reproductive attitudes in the South African Jewish community amongst self-identifying progressive women. Despite a growing field of reproductive research in South Africa and abroad, there is little research into the intersections of reproduction and religion. I asked how progressive Jewish women in Cape Town reconcile communal expectations around gender and reproduction with their secular and progressive outlooks. 


Read More
0 Comments

2/15/2022 7 Comments

Memory, reconciliation and the Jewish history of District Six

by craig nudelman


​​communal matters 

exploring the concerns of the south african Jewish community 


​Reflecting on the Jewish history of District Six, Craig Nudelman explores how this connection is understood and remembered by the Jewish community and broader South African society.

PictureThe Kaplan Centre's and South African Jewish Museum's 2012 exhibition on the Jews of District Six.
District Six is arguably one of the most challenging physical spaces confronting Cape Town, if not South Africa. From its creation as an official ‘district’ of Cape Town in 1867, housing freed slaves, immigrants, merchants, labourers and artisans, to the largely empty and contested space it is today, this area is a potent reminder of the injustices of apartheid. Because of the forced removals of black and Coloured South Africans, which took place between 1966 and 1976, District Six has been ingrained in our minds as a symbol of apartheid and segregation. Yet, rarely featured in our national conversations is the Jewish connection to District Six. A once vibrant and multiethnic community, District Six was home to thousands of Jews from the 1880s to their departure in the mid-1940s and -1950s. District Six is arguably also emblematic of how Jews ‘became’ white in the South African context. Considering our long association with District Six can we also ‘claim’ District Six as ‘ours’?

"Have South African Jewry, whose wealth and position, which was aided by their racial status, mostly forgotten their humble roots in District Six? "

Read More
7 Comments

11/29/2021 3 Comments

The silent pandemic: Male sexual abuse in the South African Jewish community

by ​Rozanne Sack & Wendy Hendler


​​Communal matters

​exploring the concerns of the South african jewish community


Rozanne Sack and Wendy Hendler, co-founders of Koleinu SA, write about the challenges of confronting sexual abuse against males in the South African Jewish community. 

PictureKoleinu SA spotlights male sexual abuse in the Jewish community

​David*, a member of the Johannesburg Jewish community, is a survivor of early childhood sexual abuse. He is one of very few men to come forward and report his abuse to Koleinu SA. For victims of sexual abuse, especially those from smaller communities such as ours, where the perpetrator is usually well known to the victim and an active member of the community, reporting sexual abuse is inhibited by both fear and shame.  

Founded in 2012, Koleinu SA was established as a helpline for victims of abuse in the South African Jewish Community. It has since grown to become an advocacy and training organisation in the areas of gender-based violence (GBV) and child sexual abuse. Although Koleinu SA’s helpline has taken hundreds of calls over the past eight years, the vast majority have been from women. Not because GBV and sexual abuse does not happen to men and boys in the Jewish community. Rather, because of the compounded shame and humiliation that male victims experience. We have some understanding of the huge barriers that women and girls have to overcome in order to come forward. For males it is doubly difficult. Most will suffer lifelong consequences and carry their secret to the grave.


Read More
3 Comments

10/4/2021 3 Comments

Dreaming of Diversity for Jewish Community Schools

by maya Schkolne


​communal matters

​exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


​Maya Schkolne ​suggests that despite the many positives of Jewish community schools in South Africa, their lack of diversity -- particularly racially and socio-economically -- can leave students ill-equipped to contribute meaningfully to broader South African society.  

PictureSchkolne suggests community schools leave students "ill-equipped to consciously converse" with students from different backgrounds (Photo courtesy of Facebook, UCT, Rhodes Must Fall).
​The twelve years of my formal schooling was at Jewish community schools. First, I attended Herzlia Milnerton Primary, which has since closed, transferred to Herzlia Highlands Primary, continued to Herzlia Middle School, and, in 2006, I matriculated from Herzlia High School. As a student, I was challenged to grow academically within an excellence-driven environment. I enjoyed Art, Drama and History as well as the communal seders and school plays. Like many of my fellow students, I had some extracurriculars outside of school. And, yet, when I reflect back on the twelve years of formal education that I received, despite the many positives, there was a stark disconnect from what I was exposed to during my time at school and to the experiences and lived realities of the majority in South Africa.

"But there was a key component missing in our school’s resourceful environment: diversity". 

Read More
3 Comments

9/1/2021 1 Comment

What’s the big ‘gap’ of a Jewish education?

by natalie barnett


​Communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


Having sent all three of her children to Jewish community schools, Natalie Barnett reflects on the pros and cons of sending children to a private, faith-based, predominantly white school within the South African context. 

TO my utmost delight I no longer find myself schlepping my kids to and from school every day. This is not because of lockdown but rather, as of last year, all three of my children have now matriculated, each having spent every year, from preschool to grade 12, at a community Jewish day school. If recent research on the South African Jewish community is anything to go by, this may be unremarkable to some and quite expected by others. But for me it wasn’t what I had originally envisaged for my offspring. My husband, however, was determined that they follow in his footsteps at United Herzlia Schools. 
Picture
​According to the 2019 Jewish Community Survey of South Africa (JCSSA), 75% of school-aged Jewish children in South Africa currently attend Jewish schools.

Read More
1 Comment
<<Previous

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

    Categories

    All Antisemitism Anti Zionism Anti-Zionism Apartheid BDS Black Lives Matter Communal Matters Constitutional Matters COVID 19 COVID-19 Democracy Emigration Environmentalism Freedom Of Expression GBV Hate Speech Holocaust By Bullets Holocaust & Genocide Identity IFP Interfaith Israel & Global Jewry Israel & Zionism Jewish Art Jewish Education LGBTQIA+ Machloket L'shem Shamayim Migration Progressive Judaism Social Responsibility South Africa Israel Relations South African Elections South African Jewish History The ANC The South African Constitution Youth

    KEEP UP TO DATE

Subscribe to Newsletter
Picture