Latest News
On 31 January 2012, the SAJBD's Senior Reseacher presented the Board's submission to the Press Freedom Commission's public hearings on print media regulations at the Braamfontein Recreation Centre.
By Mary Kluk
South Africa's "Travelling Rabbi", Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, who heads the Board's Country Communities Section has launched a YouTube Channel. The recent documentary "Shalom the Beloved Country" shown on Issues of Faith on SABC2 is now available in five parts. Learn more about his remarkable work in South Africa's small towns and far flung places, as well as in several Southern African countries through the African Jewish Congress
By Mary Kluk
The start of the secular new year is a time of new beginnings and in particular for our school leavers now taking their first steps in forging their own life’s pathways as independent adults. Once again, all our Jewish day schools produced consistently outstanding results, and Jewish candidates figured prominently amongst the country’s top achievers. Read more
The SA Jewish Board of Deputies is disturbed by the flippant use of Holocaust imagery and terminology for personal or political agendas and to vent frustrations at current situations.
Article by Steven Gruzd on SA Jewry and apartheid, published the Sunday Independent on 4 December 2011
By Mary Kluk
With the school year ending this week, many members of our community will be leaving shortly for their end-of-year holidays. I would like to take this opportunity to wish them a very safe journey and to travel with the utmost care. There is no need during this time to rush to one’s destination. Part of the pleasure of going away, after all, is to travel to or through parts of our beautiful country that we otherwise never see. Why not opt for a leisurely drive, with regular stops, rather than treating the journey as something to be gotten over with as quickly as possible? At the minor cost of arriving an hour or two later, one can have a stress-free and much safer trip.
Read a review of Jewish Memories of Mandela by Professor Reuben Musiker in the latest edition of Jewish Affairs
Read the remarks made by SAJBD Associate Director David Saks at the Port Elizabeth Launch of Jewish Memories of Mandela, on 27 November 2011
By Mary Kluk
The Board’s extensive involvement in responding to the Russell Tribunal on Palestine has raised, not for the first time, questions as to why we devote so much effort to Israel issues. According to its mandate, the Board’s primary focus is to ensure the safety and well-being of the local Jewish community (and also to represent the community on international Jewish forums). Israel-related issues, by contrast, fall within the ambit of the SA Zionist Federation, and the various Zionist-focused organisations that fall under its umbrella. Why, then, has defending Israel become so much a Board concern?
Read the presentation made by SAJBD National Chairman to a parliamentary discussion symposium on the Middle East on 16 November 2011 in Cape Town
By Steven Gruzd and Charisse Zeifert
The recent Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) was a classic example of propaganda masquerading as fact. This was political theatre at its best, staged to sway views through the use of biased, selective and emotive information. It marshalled high-profile activists and peace laureates – and the rarity of a Holocaust survivor condemning Israel – to convey its central message that Israel equals apartheid. With no legal force and untouchable luminaries, it would seek a win in the court of public opinion.
Fitting Tribute to our 'Travelling Rabbi'
By Mary Kluk
How SA Jewry took on the Russell Tribunal
By Mary Kluk
Above Board Column by Mary Kluk 3 November 2011
The University of South Africa, one of the world's ‘mega universities’, caters for over 300 000 enrolled students. It can readily be understood, therefore, that arranging its examination timetables to avoid clashes with Jewish holidays poses major logistical challenges. In the past, the university has generally been able to shift the relevant dates once alerted to any problems, but sometimes this has proven to be simply unfeasible.
Review of "Jewish Memories of Mandela" by Amanda Watson in the North Eastern Tribune, week ending 21 October 2011
Join us for the Cape Town launch of the SAJBD's new book, Jewish Memories of Mandela at the SA Jewish Museum on Monday 31 October 201. RSVP 021 465-1546 or info@jewishmuseum.co.za
Read about the connections to Cape Town in the Jewish Memories of Mandela, the new publication by the SAJBD and Umoja Foundation
Jewish Affairs, Volume 66 Number 2, Rosh Hashana 5772/2011
Highlights include:
A focus on Judaism in South Africa, with articles examining the influence of the UK Chief Rabbinate, the role of B’nei Akiva and Yeshiva College in pioneering religious Jewish day school education and the importance that Kol Nidre night has traditionally assumed for South African Jewry right across the spectrum of religious observance.
In a rare interview Michael Schneider, one of the most illustrious products of SA Jewry who went on to hold several of the most senior positions in Jewish communal service, recounts his dramatic early days as an activist in the anti-apartheid African Resistance Movement in Cape Town and his subsequent escape into exile after the movement was infiltrated by the security establishment.
In the wake of this year’s latest ‘Royal Wedding’, many will no doubt enjoy the account we publish of the 1946 Royal Visit to South Africa as experienced by Jewish residents of the little Free State town of Clocolan.
Jewish themes in the novels of James A. Michener, the Eichmann Trial as seen by one of today’s preeminent Holocaust historians and Howard Jacobson’s acclaimed Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Finkler Question.
Read an article by Barbara Cole of the Daily News on Jewish Memories of Mandela
"Mandela and the Middle East" - read extracts from the book as published in the September 2011 edition of the Jewish Observer. Download here
On 29-30 October 2011, our 2011 Cape Conference will be examining the effect that apartheid had on our community and asking how we are adapating to a post-apartheid South Africa. The Gala Opening will be addressed by Mr Dan Diker, newly elected Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress.
Please contact Debbie on+27214646724 or sajbd2@ctjc.co.za
Click the heading for more information
The SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and SA Zionist Federation (SAZF) are disappointed by President Zuma’s statement that South Africa will support the recognition by the United Nations of an independent Palestinian state. While we support the creation of an independent Palestinian state co-existing in peace alongside Israel, this can only be achieved through a process of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Unilateral action by either party aimed at bypassing the negotiations process will result only in increased polarisation and will retard rather than advanced the prospects of achieving a lasting peace agreement.
For the full statement, click the heading above
For further comment, contact Mary Kluk (), Avrom Krengel () or Zev Krengel ()
"Like" our Facebook page! 
Follow us on Twitter! 
There’s Something about Mary
By Steven Gruzd
Mary Kluk, the passionate and energetic new National Chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies is determined to apply the lessons she’s learned from her professional life and long involvement in the Council of KwaZulu Natal Jewry (CKNJ) to her new position.
“I’ve learned the importance of compromise,” she said. “People in Jewish leadership positions are dynamic, wonderful people and I enjoy working with them, and we all have to be part of the same team."
Mary is the first-ever SAJBD National Chairman from Durban, and only the second woman to hold this position after Marlene Bethlehem who served two terms from 1995 to 1999.
Jewish Memories of Mandela is a landmark new book jointly published by the SAJBD and the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and theUmoja Foundation. It chronicles for the first time the varied roles of individual Jewish men and women in the life and career of Nelson Mandela, and the remarkable extent to which Jewish South Africans participated in the anti-apartheid struggle, and the nation building, reconstruction and reconciliation after apartheid's demise.
To order this magnificent new linen-bound coffee table book for R400 (excluding postage and packaging), email Shirley Beagle beagle@beyachad.co.za or call +2711645-2583.
On 26 August 2011, the Board hosted “Jewish Struggle Heroes Remembered – A Conversation with Paul and Amos Goldreich” at Liliesleaf in Rivonia, where their late father Arthur Goldreich had lived with his family in the early 1960s. Liliesleaf also served as the headquarters for Umkono we Siwze, the armed wing of the then-banned African National Congress and is now a national museum. Paul lived there as a young child, and both spoke about the effects of apartheid on the children of activists, and Arthur’s subsequent life and work in Israel.The event also allowed an important conversation about the roles and responsibilities of Jews during and after apartheid in South Africa. The Board's 2011 Human Rights Award was awarded posthumously to Arthur Goldreich, and Paul and Amos, who both now live in the UK, travelled to South Africa to receive it on behalf of their late father.
Over the past 15 years, Venezuela’s Jewish community has dwindled from about 30,000 at its height to just a third of that size, through a combination of assimilation and, much more concerning, growing state-sponsored anti-Semitism under the oil-fuelled Hugo Chávez regime.
The SA Jewish Board of Deputies' Steven Gruzd interviewed Sammy Eppel, a journalist and one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Caracas by telephone in advance of his trip to South Africa as a guest speaker at the SAJBD, entitled “The Jewish Global Citizen.”
Click below for YouTube clips on State-Sponspored Anti-Semitism in Venezuela:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1L34I7TFws&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHdSsOgryk&feature=related
This article first appeared on www.myshtetl.co.za on 28 August 2011
JAPAN APPEAL
Dear Community Member
We have had an incredible response from our community to our appeal last Monday for donations to assist with providing relief to those affected by the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. Funds are being channelled through the Joint Distribution Committee who are working within the affected areas.
We now have a further appeal from the South African Rescue Team, who require funding to allow them to continue their work in Japan. The 40 person Rescue SA team was drawn from emergency services across the country and includes 10 doctors and paramedics who left for Tokyo last week Wednesday, 16 March 2011, with 15 tons of equipment, and 1200 litres of water, to join aid workers and rescue teams from around the world that have responded to the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
If you would like to contribute to this appeal, please make a donation to:
SA Jewish Board of Deputies
Standard Bank
Killarney
Current Account
Account number : 200 305 190
Branch code : 007205
Reference : Japan and your Surname
Please fax your transmission report to 0866146692.
Many thanks
WENDY KAHN
NATIONAL DIRECTOR
For many of those viewing the displays at the forthcoming ‘One Family Many Faces Festival’ in Tel Aviv over Sukkot, the South African installation is bound to come as quite a surprise. It has become commonplace abroad for SA Jewry to be viewed as a nebach community, shrinking, ageing and embattled. What the display will show instead is a dynamic, active and forward-looking community, with a remarkably youthful communal leadership and an outstanding network of Jewish communal organisations that is admired and envied throughout the Diaspora.
Don't forget to check under Community Notices & Community Diary for events !!!! Dont miss out!!!
WEEKLY UPDATE WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BOARD
WEEKLY UPDATE WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BOARD
Press Release on the Goldstone report
Follow us on Twitter!