Encouraging progress for new Country Communities body
Earlier this year, it was decided to establish a new organisation, called the Small Jewish Communities Association (SJCA) to take over the work of the SAJBD’s Country Communities Department from the beginning of next year. At a meeting of trustees representing some of the smaller communities from various provinces on Sunday, encouraging progress was made in getting the SJCA up and running. While there remains much work to be done, mainly from a technical-legal and administrative point of view, the fundamental principles on which the new body will be based, including the composition of its governing body (on which the SAJBD will be represented) and responsibility for its day-to-day running, are now firmly in place. Under the capable and dedicated chairmanship of Barney Horwitz, and with Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, as CEO, positioned to continue doing the outstanding work as spiritual leader to our far-flung country brethren that he has done for the past 26 years, we believe that the SJCA will be in excellent hands, and will hopefully grow from strength to strength. The SAJBD
Cape Council’s Heritage Day
Interfaith activity has long been one of the strengths of the SAJBD Cape Council. On Heritage Day last month, the Council partnered with various local faith communities in organising this year’s Cape Town Interfaith Initiative Religious Heritage Day Bus Tour. It was the seventh such tour that our Cape Deputy Director Gwynne Robins, an executive committee member of the Cape Town Interfaith Initiative of many years standing, has arranged. This year, participants visited the historic Gardens Shul, SA Jewish Museum, St Mary’s Cathedral, the Tushita Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Centre and the Shiite Mosque. Gwynne presented a history of the museum while Cape Director Stuart Diamond addressed the group at the Gardens Shul.
The importance of initiatives like this in fostering social cohesion and breaking down historic barriers of mistrust between people from different cultural, ethnic or religious backgrounds cannot be overstated. They help to turn differences between communities from potential causes of division into opportunities for learning and sharing, always in a spirit of friendship, mutual respect and commitment to common values. This is surely the kind of South Africa we should all be striving to build, whether as organisations or simply in our individual interactions with our fellow citizens, need to strive to build. Regrettably, it happens all too often that political leaders, instead of showing the way in this regard, are guilty of exacerbating tensions by making inflammatory and offensive comments about certain sections of the population. A recent example was MEC Lebogang Maile’s deplorable tweet alleging that Jews have unfairly gained control of certain buildings in the Johannesburg CBD. We are in the process of arranging a meeting with the MEC to ask him to account for this baseless and insulting charge against our community, one that runs completely counter to the non-racial values of his own party, and indeed of our country as a whole.
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