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MANY ISSUES. MORE VOICES.

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".

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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". 

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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. 

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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? "

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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.

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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". 

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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.

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7/26/2021 3 Comments

The forgotten Jewish victims of World War II: Reorienting the focus of South African Jewish commemoration

By Michael Kransdorff 


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the South AFrican Jewish community


Michael Kransdorff argues that memory and commemoration of the Holocaust often does not give its due to those murdered in the "Holocaust by Bullets." He suggests that there is a particular imperative for South African Jews to remember this less well-known history.
MY first encounter with Mordechai Perlov came at a fortuitous moment. In 2015, a few weeks prior to our first conversation over drinks in his Johannesburg flat, Litvaksig -- the Jewish Lithuanian heritage organization, for which I volunteer as a research coordinator -- had discovered a misplaced file in the Lithuanian archives listing thousands of Jews who had been ‘evacuated’ from Lithuania to the USSR during 1941. 

Initially I had hoped that this list might unlock the secret to some unknown rescue attempt of Lithuanian Jews as Nazi forces invaded the country. This would have been a remarkable discovery in a country where local collaboration was widespread and over 90% of the entire Jewish population was murdered. Mord scoffed at my suggestion. This was no humanitarian rescue effort. The people on the list were not Jews saved. Rather, like Mord and his family, they were Jews who were exiled and imprisoned in slave labour camps for being designated as enemies of the Soviet state. The majority would die of hunger, cold or disease. ​
"South African Jews have deep historical and cultural roots in Eastern Europe ... Nevertheless, we too have, until recently, also largely ignored the Eastern European Jewish experience in our commemoration of the Holocaust". 

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6/30/2021 0 Comments

Pride month is not cause for celebration but a conscious call to action

by Jacqui benson 


​communal matters

exploring the concerns of the south african jewish community 


Jacqui Benson reflects on the deep challenges still faced by the LGBTQIA+ community in South Africa, and calls on Jewish South Africans to better understand what it means to be 'allies' to the LGBTQIA+ community. 
17 May marks International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. On that day this year I stood on Monwabisi Beach in Khayelitsha with approximately 40 others at a memorial organized by Triangle Project. We were there to honour and commemorate ten of our fellow ‘siblings’ of the LGBTQIA+ ‘family’, who, since 12 February 2021, had been violently murdered simply because of their sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender identity. 
Since the 17 May the number of victims, ranging in age from 22 to 48, now stands at 14.

Of the 40 people present, and amongst a handful of other white people, I was one of two Jews.

Why is this relevant?
​"In the Jewish community, discrimination shows up as a veil of silence, the things we do not talk about, the ‘unmentionables.’ "

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6/9/2021 1 Comment

A LEGACY FROM THE PAST - SHOULD IT SURVIVE IN THE FUTURE?

by ann harris


​Communal matters
​
exploring the concerns of the South african jewish community 


Ann Harris reflects on the work of the Chief Rabbi CK Harris Memorial Foundation, and considers what the winding down of the Foundation might mean for the South African Jewish community. 
HE was the hardest of taskmasters, the severest of critics! Half a lifetime of religious leadership, communal, interfaith, welfare and educational work had instilled in Rabbi Cyril Harris the positive belief that if you worked for any community, in whatever capacity, making you responsible for the care and development of others, you had to strive to produce the best service possible - and to make sure that you took the opportunity to train, train, and train again so that up-to-date theories and skills would automatically become part of your effort.
"... his [Rabbi Harris] practical teachings of the principles of Jewish ethics, what he called “The Jewish Obligation to the Non-Jew”, are probably even more relevant in a Covid challenged world than they were twenty years ago."

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