The SAJBD is the umbrella representative spokesbody and civil rights lobby of the SA Jewish community. It promotes the safety and welfare of South African Jewry, including combating antisemitism in all its forms, and builds bridges of friendship and understanding between Jews and the broader South African population.
ASSISTANCE IN ACCESSING FINANCIAL SUPPORT – A CALL TO JEWISH BUSINESSES IN DISTRESS
As you all aware, various financial support initiatives have been announced by government and the private sector to assist businesses in distress during these impossible economic conditions.
These come in the form of tax relief initiatives from the government and large monetary sums that concerned philanthropists (such as the Oppenheimers, Motsepes and Ruperts) have donated.
Dear Community members
Financial Relief during COVID-19
It is one month since the first COVID-19 person was diagnosed in South Africa and since then we have gone through a whirlwind of emotions, including stress and anxiety.
One of the areas causing great concern for all South Africans is the pressure that the lockdown has had on businesses and the resultant financial concerns.
In the coming weeks our community will announce support mechanisms to assist you at this challenging time.
At this point, we would like to summarise for you some of the governmental relief mechanisms that have been put in place to assist South Africans.
The SAJBD is honoured to work on this important initiative together with other religious, civil society, sports personalities, academics and former political representatives calling on all South Africans to launch a national food security campaign as part of the fight against COVID-19 in our country.
Yesterday evening a group of world leaders joined Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to give pre-Pesach messages. In her message, SAJBD President Mary Kluk observed that in this terrible global crisis, “Jewish community organizations across our country and indeed around the world have joined together as never before - physically apart, but spiritually and emotionally TOGETHER”
Dear friends,
As we are all faced with new realities stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, more than ever before virtual conference calls via different software platforms became an integral part of our daily lives. We have all witnessed headlines about such calls being hacked by antisemitic groups and individuals, targeting Jewish organizations in order to disrupt meetings and spread their hate messages.
We are forwarding to you Guidance for Secure Livestreaming, courtesy of CST from the UK, to help you in making sure that your conference calls and online meetings are better protected.
Dr Israel ‘Boomie’ Abramowitz, who passed away this week in Perth, Australia at the age of 91, was a true gentleman from the old school of Jewish communal leadership in South Africa. In the course of a long and distinguished communal career, he can truly be said to have epitomised the particular strengths that have made the South African Jewish community so respected a component of global Jewry. All this he achieved while simultaneously pursuing his career as an eminent vascular surgeon.
On Sunday night, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) hosted its 50th national conference in Johannesburg. Held every two years, these gatherings are an opportunity for the community to connect to honour members who had done so much either communally or for the greater South Africa – like the late Johnny Clegg, who we honoured this year – but also to take stock of where we are.
People tend to be suspicious of change. As the thinking goes, if things have worked well enough in the past, why not carry on as before? On the other hand, circumstances inevitably do change, and when this reaches a point when the old ways of doing things are no longer sufficiently efficient and/or cost effective, then one is equally inevitably required to adapt to the new realities in order to remain sustainable.
Any visit to the Constitutional Court is a stirring experience. Once used as a prison for political activists, amongst them M K Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, it today serves as a critical vehicle for safe-guarding the fundamental human rights and freedoms on which our post-apartheid society is founded.
Welcome to our American visitors
We had hardly had a chance to (metaphorically) catch our breath after the whirlwind visit of our Women Wage Peace guests from Israel when it was time for us to welcome another prestigious delegation to South Africa, this time from the American Jewish Committee (AJC). One of the world’s most effective Jewish advocacy organisations, the AJC has a long and proud history of building relationships with different religious and ethnic communities and world leaders.
To create lasting peace, women’s voices are critical. Men alone won’t bring about peace and it’s about time that we all realise that. This is not just opinion - it’s in the numbers. From conflict prevention and conflict resolution to post-conflict reconciliation, studies have borne out that women’s meaningful participation in peace processes significantly increases the likelihood of a negotiated settlement lasting longer than 15 years.
Four remarkable Israeli women show the way forward
The main focus of the Board over the past several weeks has been preparing for the visit of a delegation from Women Wage Peace, an Israeli NGO that has brought tens of thousands of Israeli women from across the faith and political spectrum together in the common cause of working for peaceful co-existence between the different peoples in the region. Comprising two Jewish, one Muslim and one Christian women, the delegation has been brought out by the SAJBD in the lead-up to Women’s Day to share the lessons and experiences of this inspiring grassroots movement, while at the same time drawing lessons from South Africa’s own successful experiences in conflict resolution.
Turning back the tide of hate
South Africa is hardly the only democratic country that is grappling with problems of racism, xenophobia and other forms of bigotry. That much clearly emerged during a roundtable discussion on combating hate held under the auspices of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre this week. Participants included the Centre’s director Tali Nates, SAJBD National Vice-Chairman Prof Karen Milner and National Director Wendy Kahn, former German Minister of Justice Dr Däubler-Gmelin and Shanelle van der Berg representing the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). It was an engaging discussion, but also a sobering one. Throughout the free world, hate crimes are on the increase, with a strikingly high proportion of them - in Europe, North America and elsewhere – being motivated by antisemitism.
Best wishes to SAZF for their conference
The SAJBD and the SA Zionist Federation are often described as being ‘sister organizations’ (although, to take the sibling metaphor a bit further, the Federation is technically the Board’s elder brother, having been founded several years before). While the Board’s core mission is to ensure the safety and well-being of the local Jewish community while that of the Federation is to deal with issues relating to the community’s relationship with Israel, in essence the work of the two organisations is complementary. For that reason, we frequently work together, primarily when our right to identify as Zionists and support Israel is in any way threatened.
Preserving the heritage of SA Jewry
Last week, our National Director Wendy Kahn and Parliamentary Liaison officer Chaya Singer attended several budget speeches in Parliament, including for the Treasury and the Departments of International Relations and Cooperation, Public Enterprises and Home Affairs. It was encouraging to note that the comments by International Minister Naledi Pandor on the Israel-Palestine issue were measured and balanced, and that overall, the debate on the subject were much less vitriolic than in previous years. Hopefully, this will be the case on future occasions when the subject comes up for discussion.
At the time of writing, together with our National Vice-President Zev Krengel, I am in Israel, where we have participated in a number of high-level meetings aimed at providing updates on recent political developments in South Africa, sharing information pertaining to our own community and getting perspectives on the current political situation in Israel. This will form the basis of my next column.
Nahum Goldmann Fellow Programme nurtures Jewish leadership
The recently concluded Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Programme (NGFP), which this year was held in Israel, once again brought together a broad range of up-and-coming young Jewish leaders from around the world for an intensive period of Jewish learning, discussion and sharing of experiences and perspectives. As always, participants found it to be an extremely enriching and inspiring experience, particularly in the opportunities it provided for engaging with Jews from completely different backgrounds.
Zev Krengel writes in the Sunday Independent. His piece is a response to Zane Dangor who questioned whether Jewish leadership were using criticism of Israel to silence debate. In this article Krengel applies the “Duck test” as an indication of antisemitism.
Equating Zionism with racism is far too easy a way out of proper debate around the roots of the conflict in the Middle East, and Israel Apartheid Week serves to exacerbate rather than defuse the tensions. The time has come for rational debate in an attempt to find common ground between the two opposing sides, rather than slogan-shouting.
Join in this year’s Great Debate and engage with leaders from five political parties as they discuss issues pertinent to the community. Make your voice heard by sending your questions to yanir@sajbd.org or tweet your questions using #MakeUsCount.
This year, Human Rights Day coincides with the Jewish festival of Purim. While the two events appear to have little in common, in actuality, there are numerous interesting parallels between them. The Purim narrative, based on events recorded in the Book of Esther, abounds with human rights themes.
Academic freedom should be embraced, defended and never be taken for granted. This was the consensus at a meeting between representatives from Stellenbosch University (SU) and the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) at the University on Friday, 25 January 2019.
We are pleased to announce that the Chanukah 2018 issue of has been posted on the SAJBD’s Website
We are pleased to announce that the Pesach 2019 issue of has been posted on the SAJBD’s Website
South African Jewry conveyed a rousing message of support to President Cyril Ramaphosa for his efforts to confront the legacy of corruption and state capture at last night’s SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) Gauteng Council conference.
“My experiences living amongst a Jewish community. My first engagement with Jewish people began when the company I worked for merged with a Jewish family-owned-business and to whom I was then to report to as my new CEO. My first encounter with my new Boss, Ronnie Norwitz, was on a Friday when he came down to my office at around 12 looked at his watch and said “Solly aren't you going to be late for your Friday prayer?” Never before in all my years of working, had I ever had this courtesy from a boss! His other interesting comment on my return from the Mosque was all ways, "Friday's are good days ". Ronnie would always say this with the gesture of a clenched fist swinging his arm through the air as if he was going to hit someone. He always greeted me with a smile and a kind word. Braai days at work you would find him at my fire naturally.
At the biennial conference of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies Gauteng Council next week, Gauteng Jewry will have the first opportunity of engaging directly with President Ramaphosa since his assumption of the presidency earlier this year. Rather than delivering the traditional keynote address, Mr Ramaphosa will be exchanging views with eminent business leader Stephen Koseff on challenges currently facing South Africa, what the Jewish community is (or could be) doing to help address them and how each sees the future of the country and its people. In other words, it is not about what this country should be doing to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian, or any other foreign policy issue, but is framed as being a South African conversation between fellow South Africans on South African issues.
Join the SAJBD annual conference on 25 November at 17h15, as we celebrate Mandela’s Centenary with President Ramaphosa and the Nelson Mandela Centenary programme.
On 13 August 2014, then Western Cape Cosatu chairman Tony Ehrenreich posted a comment on Facebook calling for revenge attacks against the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and other “Zionist supporters” in retaliation for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Amongst other inflammatory comments, he wrote, “The time has come to say very clearly that if a woman or child is killed in Gaza, then the Jewish board of deputies, who are complicit, will feel the wrath of the People of SA with the age old biblical teaching of an eye for an eye”.
