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11/26/2020 0 Comments

Antisemitism in South Africa: What does the data say?

by prof. karen Milner


​communal matters

​exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community

 
In this article, Prof. Karen Milner looks at what the research suggests about antisemitism in South Africa, arguing that the data shows antisemitism to be relatively low.​
IN 2019 the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published a report identifying South Africa as the second most antisemitic country in the world. South Africa was second only to Poland and scored well above France, a country in which Jews fear being publicly identified as Jews and in which two elderly Jewish women were murdered in antisemitic attacks in 2017 and 2018 respectively. The ADL report caused a minor furore in the South African Jewish community, and its findings have been roundly challenged by the organised Jewish community (see here and here) and community members.
"... the ultimate test of levels of antisemitism in a country is the extent to which Jews can live their lives openly and authentically as Jews without being harassed, attacked or discriminated against. Anecdotal evidence suggests that South African Jews can and do live openly Jewish lives".  

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10/13/2020 5 Comments

Gender-based violence, language and the South African Jewish community

by rabbi bryan opert


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


Drawing on the concept of 'alienation in language', Bryan Opert argues that to effectively engage with gender-based violence, interventions and rhetoric must reflect the specific challenges faced by the Jewish community
ADDRESSING the “surge” in gender-based violence and femicide since level 3 lockdown began in mid-July, President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced three bills aimed at “help[ing] to restore the confidence of our country’s women that the law is indeed there to protect them”. The 2019/20 crime statistics, which were released on the 31 July, do not include this “surge” as the statistics don’t cover this period. Considering that the crime statistics already indicated a 1.7% increase in both sexual offences and rape, and a 0.6% rise in common assault against women, it is understandable that many would feel that the authorities have been ineffective in protecting victims of gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa.
In 2012, in response to “the rising incidence of sexual and other forms of abuse in the Jewish Community”, Koleinu SA  –  a helpline for victims of abuse in the Jewish community – was established. Wendy Hendler, co-founder and board member of Koleinu SA, explains: “globally, we know that statistics of GBV within Jewish communities reflect those of the country in which the community is located. This, however, excludes South Africa with its horrific GBV statistics”. Hendler goes on, “while Koleinu SA has dealt with sexual assault, rape and date rape cases, the majority of cases from within the Jewish community are comprised of emotional, verbal, financial and religious abuse”.
"... when a young male from our community reads an article about GBV  does he believe that it is personally relevant to him, or is it as foreign as world hunger? "

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9/10/2020 0 Comments

Never again, but yet again: Why the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre explores the history of the Holocaust and the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda side by side

by tali nates


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


In this article, Tali Nates discusses how memorialising the Holocaust and 1994 genocide in Rwanda enables South Africans to grapple with racism and xenophobia in South Africa. 
The Holocaust and Genocide Centre allows us to bring to public attention and keep in public memory the abiding dangers of supremacist thinking, whether based on race as in wartime Germany or on ethnicity, as in Rwanda. The Centre does, and should remind us, daily, how quickly ordinary people can turn from living and learning alongside one another to exterminating each other with deadly justification … may you through this very powerful memorial teach us as South Africans to reconcile rival memories, to recognise the pain of others and, most importantly, to become more fully human”.

Prof. Jonathan Jansen, September 2015, at the JHGC building dedication ceremony. 
In April 1994, while South Africans were jubilantly voting in the country’s first democratic elections, in Rwanda, a mere three and a half hours’ flight away, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi, as well as Hutu who opposed the genocide, were being slaughtered[i].
 
1994. Two countries in Africa. Two very different paths.
Not that South Africa’s transition to democracy has been easy. As xenophobic violence has shown, South Africans too have the potential for horrific violence against an “other”. 

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8/5/2020 4 Comments

outspoken rabbis: Speaking truth to power in apartheid south africa

by gwynne robins


​communal matters
​
​exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


In this article, Gwynne Robins looks at one particular Cape Town congregation, the Green and Sea Point Hebrew Congregation, where, between 1959 and 1988, four Orthodox rabbis took a stand against Apartheid. 
Irwin Manoim’s DafkaDotCom article (10 May 2020) on Rabbi Andre Ungar pays tribute to a former leader of the Reform community who not only spoke out against apartheid but was expelled from the country for his efforts.
In 1999, the former Chief Rabbi, the late Rabbi Cyril Harris, testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on behalf of the South African Jewish community. Rabbi Harris not only apologised for the collective failure of the South African Jewish community to protest apartheid, but acknowledged how the community had benefited from this system of racial oppression. As Rabbi Harris’ testimony attests, for the most part, communal silence was the norm, both from the pulpit and from communal boardrooms. Context, of course, is crucial. Caution was justified when dealing with a government with a history of antisemitism.
That said, a handful of rabbis, both Orthodox and Reform, publicly condemned apartheid and took part in protests. This article will look at one particular congregation, the Green and Sea Point Hebrew Congregation (Marais Road Shul) in Cape Town, where, between 1959 and 1988, four Orthodox rabbis took a stand against apartheid: Rabbi ES Rabinowitz, Rabbi David Rosen, Rabbi Dr Elihu Jack Steinhorn, and Rabbi Selwyn Franklin. 

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7/5/2020 5 Comments

Black lives matter: The Jewish imperative to support racial justice

By rabbi dr. samuel lebens

In this article, philosopher and Orthodox Rabbi, Samuel Lebens, reflects on Black Lives Matter, progressive politics and the Jewish imperative to support racial justice.
THE murder of George Floyd sent shockwaves through the world. In the United States, Americans of all races and creeds took to the streets to demand racial justice. Globally, protesters gathered in solidarity.
​Many Jews were among those who took to the streets. In so doing, they followed in the hallowed footsteps of multiple generations of Jews who stood shoulder to shoulder with African Americans in their long campaign for civil and economic freedom. And yet, some Jews feel deeply uncomfortable campaigning under the umbrella of the movement for Black Lives Matter. Why?
"I can imagine that many South African Jews will relate to those Jews in America (and elsewhere) who sympathise with the plight of racial minorities but who also feel alienated from their political movements". 

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6/4/2020 2 Comments

To Debate or Not to Debate? The Merits of Debating the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in South Africa

by charisse zeifert


​​Communal matters

Exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


In this article, Charisse Zeifert shares her perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of the organised Jewish community engaging in debate with the BDS movement. 
THERE are certain topics South African Jewish communal leaders will never debate. Holocaust Denial is an obvious example. But what about ‘Israel Denial’? Should Jewish communal organisations debate those who do not believe Israel has the right to exist? This is not a theoretical exercise. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) routinely engages in public debate with members of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement who argue that Israel is a racist, Apartheid and colonial state, and should not continue to exist as it has for the last 75 years.

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5/13/2020 2 Comments

The hollowing out of Jewish South Africa

By Irwin manoim


​​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community

 
In this article, Irwin Manoim looks at what the recently launched Jewish Community Survey of South Africa (2019) suggests about the future of the South African Jewish community, offering insight into communal trends and the sharp distinction between the Cape Town and Johannesburg Jewish communities.
THE 1991 South African census, the last of the apartheid era, concluded that there were 65 406 Jews in South Africa. The leading Jewish demographer of the era, Dr Allie Dubb, was quick to dispute the figure as implausible. 
​Not only were there technical problems with the survey, he said, there was reason to suspect that in those frightened times, many Jews chose not to divulge their religion. Dubb scratched his way through the census data, and calculated that the actual figure might be 91 859. After consulting other non-census data, he revised that up to 106 000.
"And now we have a major research study, produced by the Kaplan Centre which tells us that by 2019, the Jewish population had fallen to 52 300".

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5/10/2020 2 Comments

In memory of the only rabbi ordered to leave South Africa

by irwin manoim

RABBI Andre Ungar died aged 90 at his home in New York on 5 May 2020 after a long illness. Due to COVID-19 lockdown regulations, only three people were permitted to attend his funeral.
​
Rabbi Ungar, who spent two years in Port Elizabeth during the mid-1950s, has been largely forgotten in South Africa. But as South African Jews continue to come to terms with the apartheid era, Rabbi Ungar deserves a special niche in our local history: he was the only rabbi to enrage the apartheid government to such an extent that they expelled him.
Picture
Eastern Province Herald, 10 December 1956
A Hungarian Jew, Rabbi Ungar spent his childhood hiding from the Nazis in Budapest under false identities in a non-Jewish part of town.  The horror of Nazism, witnessed first-hand, would colour Ungar’s attitudes for the rest of his life and shaped his attitudes in South Africa, where he was offered his first job as a rabbi in 1955, at the Reform synagogue in Port Elizabeth, Temple Israel.
​
Ungar found his new community friendly enough. He was given a bigger house than he’d ever lived in, complete with garden and servants. Ungar started asking his congregants questions about the silent, ubiquitous but invisible host of black servants and labourers in their employ. As he himself put it in an article later: 
How did they live? What were the relationships between them and us? Naively, I voiced such questions before my new-made friends. That, I was told, is a lifetime’s study. You must be born here to understand it. Foreigners can know nothing about it. Besides, it is an unsavoury topic, a communist thing to worry about.

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4/6/2020 5 Comments

The Potential Impact of COVID-19 on the South African Jewish Community?

by Lance katz


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


In this article, Lance Katz analyses some of the potential consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the South African Jewish community. 
I write this during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown. At the time of writing this article, so much is still unknown about COVID-19 and its potential long-term impact. Officially, the global pandemic has already infected over 1,2 million people and claimed over 65 500 lives (5.5%). The United States now has the highest confirmed infection count in the world at 300 000. Healthcare systems in European countries such as Italy and Spain are overwhelmed. Thus far, South Africa has just under 1 600 reported cases nationally and only 9 deaths. Israel, which was quick to implement protective measures and which have steadily ramped these up, now has nearly 8 000 reported cases, 46 deaths and 127 people in critical condition. Things are changing so rapidly that by the time you read this article, the above statistics[1] will have altered materially.
​Against this backdrop I was asked to offer some thoughts on the impact of COVID-19 on the Jewish community. For this purpose I have taken Jewish community to mean local, that being the Cape Town Jewish Community. However, of course much of what I write is equally applicable to the Jewish Community of South Africa more broadly and to other Jewish communities globally. Instead of employing my rusty actuarial skills to try and project my own scenario about how COVID-19 is going to play out, I decided that it would be more beneficial rather to share a few reflections and general thoughts on the question of community impact, both currently and going forward.
​"Our fate and fortunes as a Jewish community are perhaps more strongly tied to those of our fellow countrymen than ever before."

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2/28/2020 1 Comment

State Capture and its economic aftermath: Why young Jewish professionals are leaving South Africa

by dan brotman


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community


In this article, Dan Brotman looks at why so many young Jewish professionals are leaving South Africa and how this might impact the future of the South African Jewish community. 
​IN 2010, I spent my last three months as a student at the University of Oregon conducting research in Cape Town. My project explored whether young Jews in the city saw their future in South Africa following the highly successful FIFA World Cup. Much of my research was a response to the 2005 nationwide survey, on the Jews of South Africa, conducted by the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at UCT. The 2005 Kaplan Centre survey found that 92% of respondents characterised themselves as likely to stay in South Africa over the next five years, which was the highest recorded preponderance of Jews ever wanting to stay in the country. My 2010 thesis concluded that “as long as young Jews feel that there is political stability and promising economic opportunities in Cape Town...they will remain for the foreseeable future, living in cautious optimism...”.
​When I arrived in South Africa ten years ago, I never would have imagined that I would not board my return flight home. Instead I have spent the last decade transforming into a member of the population group I originally interviewed. My transformation from an exclusively American Jew to a hybrid American/South African Jew began in May 2011, when I took up a position as Head of Media & Public Affairs at the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies. I then relocated to Johannesburg to take up the position of Executive Director of the South Africa-Israel Forum (SAIF), and eventually co-founded a business called En-novate with Investec in May 2016. I naturalized as a South African citizen in September 2018, and regularly contribute to publications on the state of the nation and the local Jewish community.
Between the 2005 survey and my arrival in South Africa in 2010, a number of noteworthy developments occurred in the country, some perceived as positive and others as negative by the mainstream Jewish community. Positive developments during this five-year period included strong GDP growth, which reached 5.6% in 2006, the Democratic Alliance taking control of Cape Town in 2006 and the Western Cape in 2009, and South Africa hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup. However, a number of worrying developments also began to emerge, including nationwide load-shedding in 2007/08, the 2008 election of Julius Malema as President of the ANC Youth League, and the ascent in 2009 of Jacob Zuma to the Presidency. 
"What distinguishes this latest wave of Jewish emigration from those of the past is that this one is primarily financially-driven, whereas previous waves were largely the result of political uncertainty and crime."

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