(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 80, #2, Summer 2025) Unlike countries like America and Australia, owing to discriminatory laws to stop Jewish immigration, few Holocaust survivors came to South Africa. Even though the Holocaust had removed the threat of thousands of unassimilable aliens swamping
(Author: David Saks, Vol. 80, #2, Summer 2025) South Africa’s post-apartheid honeymoon, that halcyon period of renewed hope and unity of purpose characterising the national mood in the wake of the transition to democracy in 1994, has long been a distant memory. The disillusionment
On 11 November, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies belatedly celebrated its 120th anniversary with a special gala dinner at the Wanderers Club in Sandton. More than 300 people attended the event, among them ministers; deputy ministers; the heads of parliamentary portfolio committees; representatives
(Author: Harold Behr, Vol. 79, #1, 2024) South African Jews have a long and honorable record of combining support for Israel and commitment to South Africa, the country which gave them shelter – often grudgingly – from the antisemitic plague that bedeviled Europe
(Author: Peter Arnold, Volume 79, #1, Winter 2024) “Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Jews in England and South Africa and Australia. Where do we belong…truly belong?” While I was preparing for this talk, I was reading James Shapiro’s book, Shakespeare
(Author: Karen Milner, Vol 78, #3, Spring-Summer 2023) National Chairperson’s Report – SAJBD National Conference, 3 December 2023 We are not living in normal times so this is not going to be a normal Chairperson’s speech. Instead, this is a speech from
(Author: Steven Katzew, Vol. 78, #2, Winter 2023) From time-to-time fingers are pointed at the South African Jewish community generally, and in particular its institutions and leadership under various guises, for lack of sufficient resistance to the policy of systematic racial discrimination
(Vol. 77, #2, Autumn-Winter 2022) A Liliesleaf Boyhood Editor’s Note: From December 1961 until July 1963, Paul and Nicholas Goldreich lived with their parents Arthur and Hazel Goldreich on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, then a largely rural suburb 20km north of Johannesburg. During
(Author: Solly Kessler, Vol. 77, #2, 2022) Having been allotted just a few minutes for an overview of the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies’ past, I shall only speak of the last fifty years, during which I was personally involved in the
(Author Douglas Davis, Vol. 77, #2, Autumn 2022) About a month after being thrown out of Rhodes University in the Sixties, I joined the reporting staff of the Pretoria News. Not because I had ink coursing through my veins but because I