Israeli woman makes Nobel history in chemistry

GOLDSTONE REPORT
Letters for and against / 14-16
Report’s delay - victory for Israel
and fury for Palestinians / 8
DAVIS: Report flawed / 10
www.sajewishreport.co.za
Friday, 9 October 2009 / 21 Tishrei 5770
JM COETZEE’S
NEW
BOOK
/ 13
Volume 13 Number 38
Israeli woman makes Nobel
history in chemistry SEE PAGE 3
Yiddish film
comes alive / 12
The Green
‘ploughshares’ in
Israel / 21
Community
stalwart Cyril
Goldstein passes
on / 4
SAKS: The false
premise of
‘Nordic
superiority’ / 11
Are you smarter
than your Bobba
and Zaida? / 4
New batch of
bochrim ordained
at Pretoria
Yeshiva / 2
15 years for
Regal banker Jeff
Levenstein / 5
GOLDSTONE: THE
SAGA CONTINUES
YOUTH TALK / 18
SPORTS / 24
Mr Justice Richard Goldstone addresses the media after presenting his
commission's report on the Gaza war to the United Nations Human
Rights Council in Geneva on September 29. (UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferre)
LETTERS / 14-16
CROSSWORD & BRIDGE / 20
The Friendship
Club celebrates
Women’s Day / 6
COMMUNITY BUZZ / 7
WHAT’S ON / 20
2
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
SHABBAT AND
YOMTOV TIMES
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The philosophical technician
THE TECHNICIAN came to shul
on Erev Rosh Hashanah to service the air-conditioning.
“Can I ask you a question?” he
asked me in a strong Afrikaans
accent.
“Sure.”
“In Jewish law, can you bring
sacrifices today?”
I knew where this was headed,
but I couldn’t decide whether to
skip to the point, or play along. I
decided to play along. I didn’t
want to be rude (we needed him
to service the unit) and perhaps
he might learn something accurate about Judaism.
“No, we can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the Temple in
Jerusalem was destroyed almost
2 000 years ago. Once built, sacrifices could only be brought
there; now it’s destroyed, we
can’t bring sacrifices until it is
rebuilt.”
“So how do you gain atonement for your sins today?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because if you can’t bring
sacrifices you can’t achieve
atonement.”
“Oh.”
“That’s why JC came; to die
for us and gain atonement for
our sins. If you believe in JC,
Shmini
Atzeret
Rabbi Aharon Rose,
Waverley Shul
then you can be forgiven for your
sins even today.”
“So JC was a human sacrifice.”
“Huh?”
“JC was a human sacrifice replacing the animal sacrifices
in the Temple to gain atonement.
Judaism doesn’t permit human
sacrifices.”
“Well...”
“You asked how we Jews gain
atonement for our sins today. Let
me explain how we gained atonement for our sins in Temple
times. Through Teshuvah ‘repentance’ is probably the simplest translation of the word. It
involved three stages - acknowledging the sin, regretting it,
making a conscious decision not
to make the same mistake in the
future.
“The sacrifice was just an aid
to Teshuvah - it brought home, in
a very real way, that when we cut
ourselves off from G-d, we cut
Pretoria Yeshiva ordains
another batch of bochrim
Design and layout
Frankie Matthysen
Nicole Matthysen
Website
www.sajewishreport.co.za
Ilan Ossendryver
IC-Creations
[email protected]
DIANE WOLFSON
PRETORIA
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Honourable Abe Abrahamson (Hon. Life
President), Stan Kaplan (Chairman)
Issie Kirsh (Deputy Chairman), Marlene
Bethlehem, Russell Gaddin, Norman
Lowenthal, Bertie Lubner, Benjy Porter,
Herby Rosenberg, Howard
Sackstein.
Mr Justice Meyer Joffe
(Chair, editorial comm)
ANOTHER GRADUATION another successful year - and
another 14 new rabbis from
around the world, recently
ordained in Pretoria. This concludes the eighth year of this
amazing
programme
for
Pretoria.
The Tekes Hasmacha Smicha
ceremony 5769 for Yeshiva
Machon L’hora’ah, was watched
by hundreds of family members
and friends around the world.
At the last moment, one of the
bochrim,
(now
Rabbi)
Ari
Oppenheimer from Johannesburg,
arranged a live audio-streaming
link-up on smichalive.co.cc which
had almost 1 000 hits during the
ceremony, affording family and
friends who were unable to travel
to South Africa, the opportunity to
watch the ceremony for the first
time.
As with previous years, the
students received their smicha
from the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi
Levi Wineberg whose reputation
is widespread internationally
and
from
Rabbi
Yaakov
Waharftig from “Machon Ariel”
in Israel.
Rabbi Waharftig travelled from
Jerusalem as he does each year,
to test the bochrim and in the
KASHRUT
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kosher. Where no Kashrut mark appears
on an advert, the Jewish Report
assumes no responsibility for the
Kashrut status of that establishment or
advertiser:
NK Non-Kosher
ourselves off from life itself what is happening to the animal
should be happening to me, but
for G-d’s forgiveness which follows sincere Teshuvah. If a person brought the sacrifice without
first doing Teshuvah, the sacrifice wasn’t accepted by G-d. It’s
exactly the same today - the driving factor is still Teshuvah; we
just lack the powerful audiovisual experience of the sacrifice.”
“And, what time should we set
the air-conditioner to come on?”
Tonight Shmini Atzeret begins.
“Atzeret” means “holding back”.
During the seven days of Succot,
a total of 70 bulls were brought as
sacrifices in the Temple, for the
material and spiritual benefit of
the 70 nations of the world. On
Shmini Atzeret, however, only
one bull was brought.
A king once made a lavish banquet for all his servants lasting
several days. But on the final day
he told his most beloved and dedicated servant: “All the guests
have gone home now. Stay with
me another day, and we will celebrate together, just you and I.”
Like the king in this parable,
G-d tells His servants to prepare
an ‘international party’ on
Succot and to bring sacrifices on
behalf of ourselves and all the 70
nations of the world. But on the
final day, Shmini Atzeret, He
requests His beloved Israel to
short space of a few days, manages to get to know each one of
them and build up a strong bond.
In his address, Chief Rabbi
Warren Goldstein spoke about
the words smicha and simcha which contain the same letters,
both describing celebrations and
stressing the honour of being at
the ceremony in Pretoria, where
he too was born and educated.
The new rabbonim are (from
Sydney, Australia) Shmuel Aber,
Sholom Dov Ber Bloom and
Mendy Barber (whose father
Rabbi Barber attended and
brought a message on behalf of
all the parents).
Melbourne in Australia was
also well represented by Levi
Heidingsfeld, Gedalia Levin,
Shmuel Loebenstein and Levi
Shusterman.
The Americans are Yisroel
October 9/21 Tishrei
Starts
17:54
18:10
17:44
18:03
18:00
17:59
Johannesburg
Cape Town
Durban
Bloemfontein
Port Elizabeth
East London
October 10/22 Tishrei
(Shmini Atzeret)
October 11/23 Tishrei
(Simchat Torah)
Starts
Ends
18:43
19:30
18:35
18:54
19:01
18:51
18:44
19:30
18:36
18:54
19:02
18:51
Johannesburg
Cape Town
Durban
Bloemfontein
Port Elizabeth
East London
stay another day.
We no longer have the
Temple, but our relationship
with G-d, though imperfect,
continues to thrive - Shmini
Atzeret symbolises that special
bond. And we pray that soon
the Temple will be rebuilt and
our relationship will be as
strong as it once was. Good
Shabbos and Chag Sameyach!
Epstein, Boruch Krinsky, Yehudi
Meshchaninov
and
Zalman
Popack with the UK represented
by Yosef Chaim Sufrin from
Leeds.
There
were
two
South
Africans, Ari Oppenheimer and
Mendi Katz. Mendi addressed the
large crowd on behalf of the
graduates, thanking the kehillah
for the outstanding facility, their
warmth and friendship and the
opportunity to learn first hand
about being a community rabbi,
and praised Rabbi Gidon Fox (of
the Pretoria Hebrew Congregation) and Rabbi Levin as well
for their continued support and
knowledge imparted.
Endless thanks were bestowed
on the shul’s office staff and all
those responsible for their continued care and input into the
lives of the bochrim as well as to
the entire community who
showed them hospitality and
took time to learn with them, an
experience which will help them
to succeed as rabbis.
The new intake of bochrim are
expected shortly after Succot.
K Kosher
Where no symbols appear, consult the
Beth Din Kosher Guide or contact the
advertiser.
Advertisements and editorial copy from
outside sources do not neccessarily reflect
the views of the editors and staff.
Rabbis Gidon Fox, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, Rabbi Yaakov
Warhaftig and Rabbi Levi Wineberg, at the ordination ceremony
where bochrim received their smicha.
The bochrim ready to receive their smicha certificates.
UPCOMING FEATURES 2009....
October 16
Medical Matters focusing on
Breast Awareness
October 23
Year-end Celebrations & Travel
November 6
Golden Years’ Feature
TO ADVERTISE TEL: (011) 886-0162 for more information
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
3
Israel’s Ada Yonath
wins the coveted Nobel
Prize in chemistry
ROBYN SASSEN
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY
WWW.WEIZMANN.AC.IL
THIS WEDNESDAY, 70-year-old
crystallographer Ada Yonath (pictured) became the first Israeli woman
to win a Nobel Prize.
Sharing the award with Indian-born scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and USbased Thomas A Steitz, Yonath received the
Nobel nod for “mapping the ribosome - one of
the cell’s most complex machineries - at the
atomic level”, according to the Nobel jury.
The ribosome is crucial in the development
of a new understanding of antibiotics. It is
part of the cell mechanism that translates
the DNA sequence into the protein sequence.
The job of the crystallographer is to create
maps of molecules that show where each
atom is located. The research assists in the
developing of new antibiotic treatments,
directly assisting in the saving of lives.
Born to an extremely poor Sephardi family
in Jerusalem, a moved-to-tears Yonath told
Israeli public radio “there was nothing in my
childhood to suggest that I would reach this
point”, even though she has always enjoyed
the support of her family.
Always relentlessly curious, Yonath
speaks of her childhood punctuated with
experiments - she broke her arm as a child
trying to measure the height of the balcony
of the apartment in which she lived.
She is the fourth woman ever to be thus
acknowledged in this field and joins the
ranks of Marie Curie (the chemistry winner
of 1903), whose life story inspired her to pursue science.
“I never considered my gender when I
decided to do science,” she is quoted as having said. “I was just a human being with insatiable curiosity.” But having acquired this
status and joining the ranks of just 36 women
in the 107 years of the Nobel Award’s existence, she is articulate in commenting on the
dearth of women in the sciences. The last
woman to win a Nobel was Britain’s Dorothy
Crowfoot Hodgkins in 1964.
“We make up half the population.
By not encouraging women to go into
the sciences, world culture is losing
half of its potential,” Yonath added.
Having studied at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem and a graduate student of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Carnegie
Mellon University, Yonath is the ninth Israeli
to be acknowledged by the Nobel Awards; the
third in her field of chemistry. The last Israeli
Nobel winner was Professor Robert Aumann
in the field of Economics, who won for his
work on Game Theory, in 2005.
A professor at the world-renowned
Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot,
near Tel Aviv, Yonath is broadly considered a
pioneer of ribosome crystallography. In 1980,
she was the first to observe that the ribosome
is riddled with internal chambers.
“Our research spun over many years and
developed in different directions,” she said on
Israeli radio. “Every time I thought I was facing a problem the size of Everest, I discovered
there was a bigger Everest behind it.”
Yonath is the Weizmann Institute’s first
Nobel Laureate, since its establishment 75
years ago. She joins the international ranks
of 30 Jewish Laureates to have won the
Award for chemistry.
Established in 1901, the Nobel Prize is a
coveted acknowledgement for achievements
in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine; literature; and peace. It is administered
by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm,
Sweden, in compliance with an injunction in
the will of Sweden industrialist, Alfred
Nobel.
Each prize comprises a medal, a certificate
and a cash prize of 10 million kronor ($1,4
million); the status that accompanies it is
priceless, not only to the individual recipient,
but to the nation which fostered her.
Soon after the award was announced,
Yonath received a call from President Shimon
Peres. “We are so proud of you,” he said. “It’s
hard to describe how much. You are extremely deserving of the Nobel; the award is an
achievement to the entire country.”
AROUND THE WORLD
NEWS IN BRIEF
VENEZUELA FETES MUAMMAR GADDAFI, AFTER SLAMMING ISRAEL
CARACAS - Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi was welcomed warmly in Venezuela
days after slamming Israel in a speech at the
UN General Assembly in a rant that included linking the Jewish state to the assassination of John F Kennedy. Gaddafi travelled to
the Venezuelan island of Margarita on
September 27 to attend the Second Summit
of the South featuring 61 heads of state from
Africa and South America.
"All of the people of Margarita are filled
with jubilation by your presence and offers
you this tribute as a show of our love and
great affection for the great Libyan nation,
the Arab people, the people of Africa and the
great Libyan revolution," said Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez.
The Libyan leader responded by promising to further bilateral ties between the two
oil-producing nations and calling for
reforms of the UN General Assembly to end
its "hegemony" over "the people".
The Venezuelan leader, an outspoken critic of Israel, has sought increasingly to form
alliances with nations that are both antiAmerica and anti-Israel, such as Iran and
Libya, much to the consternation of the local
Jewish population. (JTA)
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
Would be ‘funny’ if the young
ones demolish the oldies
RITA LEWIS
Photo: supplied.
4
SA community
stalwart Cyril
Goldstein passes
on in Melbourne
ROBYN SASSEN
STALWART OF the Johannesburg
Jewish community and well-loved
glass merchant, Cyril Goldstein
(pictured)
passed
away
in
Melbourne, Australia on erev Rosh
Hashanah.
Born in 1922 in Bethal, to
Lithuanian
emigrants,
Cyril
worked as an artisan in Bethal
before moving to Johannesburg
where he was indentured into the
glass business under his uncle
Phillip Kaplan at Express Glass.
By 1942, he had accumulated sufficient income and skills to start his
own enterprise, Reliable Glass
Works, an autoglass specialist.
As the then co-chairman and
joint CEO of PG Group, Bertie
Lubner,
who
subsequently
acquired Reliable Glass works,
recalls, “Cyril was a very proud
man. He had a unique personality. His integrity was 1 000 per
cent. He would never ever tell a
fib, although he might have sidestepped issues by omission,” he
quips, a twinkle in his voice. “He
was a real character in the
industry.
“Cyril was a careful listener - or
he had the courtesy to seem to be
one; he always had his own
thoughts. As the PG family, we
adored and respected him. One
could never say a bad word about
Cyril.”
He was also, as Sandy Budin,
secretary at the Great Park
Synagogue fondly remembers, a
good, caring man, who had wonderful foresight. A receptionist at
PG Group commented on how
Cyril never forgot her birthday and
always brought cakes to the office.
Budin recalls that Cyril never wore
a watch. Having been raised on a
farm, he always maintained that he
knew the time of day from the position of the sun. His farm upbringing in Mpumalanga also ensured
that he could speak SiSwati fluently; he engaged with dignity with
his black employees.
Cyril devoted much of his life in
selfless service to the Jewish community. Starting as treasurer of
the Bethal Shul, he joined the
Lions Shul in Doornfontein when
he moved to Johannesburg. In
1955 he joined the Great Synagogue in Wolmarans Street, Hillbrow, serving as gabbai, chairman
and treasurer, for several terms of
office, over a period of more than
50 years.
Lubner acknowledges: “His
devotion to Wolmarans Shul was
remarkable. He was everything,
including the shamas and the
goodwill man.”
The then executive director of
the Union of Orthodox Synagogues, Isaac Reznik, concurred:
“Cyril spent hours and hours in
shul. He carried out his duties 101
per cent. He was very easy to get
on with, and never spoke a bad
word about anyone. If you asked
him to do you a favour, he’d thank
you for allowing him to do a mitzvah.
“His life was the shul. He never
wanted honours. But he did the
work of three or four committee
members.” He oversaw the addition of the small shul next to the
Great Synagogue in Wolmarans
Street in 1971. This was the shul’s
hall, converted to serve the daily
minyan, to save the trouble of
opening up the big shul each day
for a small crowd.
When it was decided to relocate
the Great Synagogue to Oaklands,
Cyril was one of the tenacious
proponents of its creation, insisting that the shul be moved “brick
by brick” to preserve some of the
grandeur of the old Great
Synagogue. Of course the shul
wasn’t moved brick by brick, but
it was reproduced with earnestness in Oaklands; the shul’s interior elements, including the seats,
the chandelier, the bimah and the
foundation stones were moved,
thanks to Cyril’s input. One of
Cyril’s dreams was to finish writing a book on the history of the
Jewish congregations in Johannesburg.
In 2005 Cyril emigrated. He is
survived by his wife Edith, children Michelle, Stanley and
Chyrisse and their spouses; his
brother Bobby; and eight grandchildren.
THE SAYING that “laughter is
the best medicine” may or may
not be true, but what it is the
best medicine for or where you
can obtain this medicine, no one
is telling. The South African
Zionist Federation however is
offering their take on the laughter part of the equation with
what promises to be a hilarious
function entitled “Are you
smarter than your Bobba and
Zaida?”
The show will star (among others yet to be announced) those
two stand-up comedians, Mark
Banks and Mel Miller who will be
assisting a host of other Bobba
and Zaida “funnies” from the
community, in seeing if they can
pit their (dying?) brains with the
(growing) brains of their (or
someone else’s) grandchildren.
The “grandchildren” will be a
team made up of grade 4s from
the different King David Schools.
The quiz is based on the TV show
“Are you smarter than your
kids?” and the event promises to
be a riot of laughter and fun,
with the questions being on a
level for everyone (to answer,
poke fun of or make some funny
remark about).
The event will be held on
October 18 at 15:00 in the Yeshiva
College Hall,
Long Avenue,
Glenhazel, Johannesburg.
Bring along whatever can make
a noise - your vuvuzelas, your
graggas and your hands for clapping. The laughter will be on the
house.
Cost is R50 per person.
Enquiries and bookings can be
made at (011) 645-2510/2 or book
Comedian Mel Miller who will
be a Zaida for the night.
Tragic fate of Jews of Rhodes
and Cos, highlighted
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH BY
MOIRA SCHNEIDER
CAPE TOWN
OF THE 1 767 Jews on the islands
of Rhodes and Cos at the time of
the Nazi deportation in July 1944,
only 163 survived the Second
World War. The Jewish Martyrs of
Rhodes and Cos is an eyewitness
account by a leading member,
Hizkia Franco, of what befell this
ancient community from 1936
onwards.
In lamenting its precipitate
destruction, the author describes
the community’s “glorious past.
For long centuries, it had shone
like a star on the horizon of the
Jewish east. It was a centre of
Talmudic study, a centre of light,”
he writes.
The book was first translated
into English from the original
French by his grandson, Joseph
Franco, in 1994 - this version is
now in its second edition.
Hizkia himself managed to
escape from Rhodes just prior to
the deportation. “It would appear
that the authorities told him he
had to get out - nobody really
knows what happened,” says
Joseph.
“The Germans issued him with
an exit permit; he made his way to
Turkey to try and get help for his
compatriots on Rhodes, but the
Turks, bizarrely, refused him
entry for the simple reason that he
had renounced his Turkish
nationality.
“So he was deported to Palestine
and saw out the last couple of
years of the war there.”
Joseph Franco with a copy of his
grandfather’s book, The Jewish
Martyrs of Rhodes and Cos, which
he has translated into English
from the original French.
Afterwards he settled in the
Belgian Congo, where he wrote the
book in 1947.
When Mussolini introduced the
Racial Laws to the Italian-controlled territory in 1936, Franco
approached de Vecchi, the governor of the 12 Dodecanese islands,
in a largely vain attempt to reverse
the situation.
The islands, for many hundreds
of years Turkish, had been given
to Italy for fighting the war on the
side of the allies during the First
World War.
In the early 1920s, the majority
of the Jewish population had
opted for Italian citizenship
instead of remaining Greek or
Turkish. “That’s probably the reason that so many were killed,”
Joseph comments, adding that
several were saved purely because
they were Turkish.
“Among them was my grandfather’s son, Albert, who was taken
off the (deportation) train only
because he (had) married a lady of
Turkish nationality.”
When Joseph originally published his translation, he says its
success was “totally unexpected”.
It has, for example, been made recommended reading on the history
of the Greek Jews by that country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In addition, Sephardi Jews of
Spanish origin have been granted
a special dispensation in that they
only have to live in the country for
two years - as opposed to 10 - to
reclaim their citizenship lost as a
result of the expulsion of the Jews
in 1492.
The list of the inhabitants of
Rhodes and Cos (and their eventual fates) provided at the back of
the book is of assistance to the
authorities in these cases, Franco
says.
In a sad twist, Hizkia dedicated
the original book to his son, who
was killed in a car crash in thenRhodesia four days before his son,
Joseph, was born. Joseph, in turn,
dedicated the translated version to
his eldest daughter, Hilary Anne,
who tragically passed away in 1977
at the age of 12.
• The Jewish Martyrs of Rhodes
and Cos is obtainable from the
Sephardi Hebrew Congregation
of Cape Town (021) 439-1962, the
Cape Town Holocaust Centre
(021) 462-5553 or from Joseph
Franco (021) 433-2002 or e-mail
[email protected]
AROUND THE WORLD
NEWS IN BRIEF
ROMANIA TO DEDICATE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
ROME - A Romanian National
Holocaust Memorial will be dedicated in central Bucharest.
Holocaust survivors will join
political, cultural, social and
religious dignitaries at this
week's ceremony for a monument commemorating Jewish
and Gypsy victims. Since 2004,
Romania has marked October 9
as Holocaust Commemoration
Day.
President Traian Basescu laid
the cornerstone for the memorial in 2006 and is expected to
attend the dedication.
The Romania Ministry of
Culture, Religious Affairs and
National Heritage described the
monument, designed by Peter
Jacobi, as "a contemporary
expression of a memorial, the
bearer of a message, a visible
sign, an active space with which
the public can interact freely".
The monument includes five
sculptures symbolising Jews and
Roma suffering, a central memorial site and two installations
using tombstones.
Among those attending the
dedication will be Warren Miller,
chairman of the US Commission
for
the
Preservation
of
America's Heritage Abroad, and
Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of
International Affairs of the
American Jewish Committee,
who also serves as the OSCE representative on combating antiSemitism.
Construction of the monument was mandated by an international commission on the
Holocaust in Romania, headed
by Elie Wiesel, which released a
400-page report in 2004. As many
as 380 000 Jews and thousands of
Gypsies were killed in the
Holocaust in Romanian-occupied territories. (JTA)
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
5
Regal Banker Jeff Levenstein,
to spend 15years in jail
OWN CORRESPONDENT
HOW THE mighty have fallen.
Jeff Levenstein (pictured), once
the golden boy of South African
Jewish bankers, will effectively
spend 15 years in jail, unless his
appeal against Acting Judge
Naran Singh’s judgment in the
South Gauteng High Court this
week, succeeds. Two assessors
assisted the judge in this highly
technical case.
Levenstein, founder and former
CEO of Regal Treasury Bank, has
been sentenced on six counts of
fraud and two contraventions of
the Companies Act.
The case, which has run for
eight years, has clearly taken its
toll on this once debonair, selfassured chartered accountant
whose Johannesburg headquarters breathed opulence. He looked
a dejected, beaten man this week.
Justice Pandya allowed him leave
to appeal against conviction and
sentence and upped his bail from
R20 000 to R1 million.
Levenstein has been found
guilty of contriving a branding
model that was a means to bring
in and recognise in the Regal
income statement what was inappropriate and improper in terms
of accounting practice.
At its peak, Regal was still a
tiny bank with 1 600 depositors
and assets of R1,6bn.
This once flamboyant banker
who ran his “empire” like an Old
Boys’ club, saw in 2001 through
injudicious practices the collapse
of Regal, which had cost depositors R198 million and shareholders some R200 million.
In its heads of argument, the
prosecution stated that Levenstein had “helped himself” to R2
million from the bank as a
“bonus”, but which was entered
in the books as a “restraint of
trade” payment.
His, some would say “peculiar”
ideas on accounting and financial
management, sometimes caused
concern to those who worked with
him. His “bank talk” was, according to former colleagues, sometimes hard to understand and it
intimidated staff members. He
bulldozed - or fired - anyone who
got in his way, including a most
prominent Johannesburg businessman, non-executive director
Ronnie Lubner.
He had some unorthodox ideas,
which flew in the face of standard
business practice, for instance to
put the Regal name to a business,
such as Regal Travel, and to
For
great
results
advertise
in the
SA
Jewish
Report
charge the company for the privilege of doing that, with the payments listed as “income”.
Levenstein occupied both positions of chairman and CEO of
Regal in the face of strong opposition from the Reserve Bank. In
turn, he would use his annual
report to criticise the Reserve
Bank and giving the governor lessons in macroeconomics, as one
journalist put it.
Senior Advocate John Myburgh
presided over an enquiry into the
collapse of the bank in 2001 in
terms of the Banks Act of 1990. In
the end he recommended that
Levenstein be charged with 187
counts of fraud and various contraventions of the Companies Act
and Banks Act. In some circles
the view has been expressed that
Levenstein had been lucky only to
have
faced
eight
charges.
(Myburgh also had some hard
words for Regal’s auditors, Ernst
and Young, accusing them of acting in breach of the Public
Accounts and Auditors Act and
the Banks Act during Regal’s 2000
audit. The auditing firm had
given consent to the release of the
2001 preliminary financial results
of Regal Holdings, when it had
not completed the 2001 audit properly).
Myburgh found that Levenstein
was not fit to be an executive
director, chief executive and
chairman of Regal Holdings.
Among the damning findings
were that Levenstein did not exercise the utmost good faith and
integrity in his dealings with and
on behalf of the bank.
He
further
found
that
Levenstein did not exercise “reasonable skill and care” and that
furthermore he did not always act
in the best interest of the bank,
depositors and shareholders.
Levenstein, he said, also permit-
ted a conflict of interest between
his interests and those of the
bank, its depositors and shareholders.
Myburgh found Levenstein’s
management skills to be “incompetent” and “amateurish”. In a
harsh criticism he accused
Levenstein of acting dishonestly
and fraudulently and that he confused corporate governance and
thuggery.
Myburgh found at the time that
Levenstein, having kept the
Reserve Bank on a string for
19 months, had arranged for his
brother-in-law, Jack Lurie, to be
appointed chairman of the company, with the support of the
board. He remarked that Levenstein treated the board with
“utter contempt”.
Levenstein was fixated with
Regal’s share price at the JSE and
instructed his staff at the bank’s
two trusts to keep on buying
Regal’s shares to boost the price.
He also gave money to other firms
to buy Regal shares. He manipulated the Regal share price. Some
45 per cent of the equity of Regal
at one stage was in the hands of
another small financier, Mettle
with Mettle apparently warehousing the shares that Regal had
bought. These shares were cancelled by the curator.
So eager was Levenstein to
grow Regal that he allowed borrowers’ standards to slip - and he
did some extraordinary things on
the asset side of the balance sheet
as well, by stretching accounting
rules to such an extent that Ernst
& Young threatened to qualify the
accounts. When Levenstein started threatening his auditors, they
withdrew their audit opinion.
It was during a stand-off
between him and the auditors
that the Reserve Bank placed
Regal under curatorship, with the
curator finding that the liabilities
exceeded the assets quite hopelessly and there was no chance of
one of the Big Five banks performing a rescue operation. An
inquiry by Myburgh accused
Levenstein of criminal mismanagement and fraud. He said Regal
had been run recklessly and
referred the matter to the
National Prosecuting Authority.
It has taken a further five years to
reach this point.
Levenstein intends to appeal,
which could add further months
to the trial. He claims to have
spent his last cent on legal
expenses and to be living on the
charity of friends.
CONTACT
Trevor Stamelman
Tel: (011) 885-3742
Cell: 082-608-0168
[email protected]
www.stamelmanproperties.co.za
• To list your property for sale or
rental (Residential, Commercial,
Industrial, other) or • To buy or rent
properties or • To comment, give
feedback, have your say or • To list
your business and or services on our
website or • To join Stamelman properties and you are either a full status
estate agent or potential Intern new
candidate agent or • To find out if and
how you qualify for bond finance or •
To get information on property, market
conditions etc, • For all the above and
more send details and info to
[email protected]
• Website is up and running (thanks
to Allan Bateman and team)
• Thanks to Mel Stamelman and team
for our new logo.
RENTALS
• Westpoint:
Morningside 2 bed, 2
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6
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
SOCIAL SCENE
Rita Lewis [email protected]
A bellyful of good fun was had by all
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY RITA LEWIS
THE 15th birthday of the Friendship Club
and the celebration of Women’s Day
turned out to be “an affair to remember”
when some unusual entertainment in the
form of two experienced and sprightly
women who entertained the 60-strong gathering with an adept and versatile performance of belly dancing.
One of them, attorney Ester Resnik, who
is also a member of the JNF Ladies Choir,
said she thoroughly enjoyed the “exercise”
and it was wonderfully therapeutic and
great fun - not only for the entertainers,
but for those watching as well.
Aryo Jacobson, who specialises in healing, medication and pre-birth training, has
danced in various forms since childhood.
She belongs to the same belly dancing studio as Resnik and also gave a demonstration of her style of belly dancing.
The woman behind the idea of having
the belly dancers, was the function organiser and MC, Freda Epstein who started the
Friendship Club 15 years ago and is its
founder chairman.
She said it was important for people to
feel they can still be interesting, productive
and versatile - even when they are confronting their middle and later years.
“These dancers showed just what women
can do when they want to.”
She said she had started the club 1994
when she saw the need for people who were
on their own, no longer active in the sports
sections or could no longer afford to be
members of the Automobile Club (as it was
then called) and who still wanted to be
allowed to be “part” of the goings on there.
The club started with 30 members who
came for a bi-monthly light lunch on
Sundays and joined in the outings to places
of interest, theatre etc.
The function was held at the Killarney
Country Club and who better to discuss
how to keep young despite adversities, robberies, hijackings, an acrimonious divorce
than the guest speaker, Edith Venter who
was at the function with her husband,
Johnnie Schwartz.
Among her many amusing stories and
anecdotes on life’s vagaries was how she
had met her “new” husband, Johnnie. She
recalled how she had stopped at a traffic
light and the man in the car next to her
started a conversation through the open
windows. She said she had been decidedly
disinterested in meeting someone this way
and sped off.
Being a macho man, Johnnie was having
none of this and caught up with her, throwing his cap into her car.
How he retrieved it is just part of life’s
ongoing story.
• Anyone wishing to enquire about the
Friendship Club should call Epstein on 0826060-930.
Preparing to cut the con-joined birthday cakes (to celebrate both the Friendship
Club’s 15th birthday and Women’s Day) are guest speaker, Edith Venter with organiser of the event, Freda Epstein, member of the Killarney Country Club Committee
Russel Sasinsky and Pam Frampton.
Edith Venter and
Frieda Epstein.
Barbara Borel, Jerome Lang and Crystal Kaplan head of JNF Ladies Choir.
A (clothed) Crystal Kaplan and Ayro
Jocobson show everyone how belly
dancing is done.
David and Sonia Genn. Pam Frampton, co-founder member of
the Friendship Club presents belly
dancer, Ester Resnik, with a gift for her
entertaining show.
Edith Venter addressing the gathering.
Ester Resnik’s niece, Amy Karp (9) who
worked the sound system for the
dancers, (and completed the 8km section of the 702 Walk the Talk), is presented with a gift by Laura Partensiani,
the Friendship Club’s liaison officer.
Barney and Sarah Segal.
Queenie Jacobson and Lena Jacobsberg.
09 - 16 October 2009
COMMUNITY BUZZ
LIONEL SLIER
082-444-9832, fax: 011-440-0448,
[email protected]
WINDHOEK
Windhoek is the capital of Namibia
and its name means “Windy corner”, but both Port Elizabeth and
Cape Town, to name only two
cities, deserve the name much
more.
Marc Kopman concludes this
search for Jewish roots in the
country:
“Driving into Windhoek, the first
impression is that it is not much
different to Bloemfontein - very
clean, clinical and well-organised
and we enjoyed a pleasant stay at
the Kalahari Sands Hotel.
“Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft (Country communities spiritual leader)
had given me Zvi Gorelick’s phone
number for contact purposes
regarding anything Jewish in
Windhoek. However, we were only
there for one night and one day and
not for Shabbat.
“It was a pleasant surprise walking into Windhoek the next day
and finding an environment of
modern malls and shops, cleanliness, police presence and eventually the synagogue which although
locked, is without doubt, an active
one and I took the opportunity to
photograph it.
“Then it was time to head out to
the airport and homeward bound.
We both remarked that, if ever,
looking for an alternative African
destination to settle in, Windhoek
could easily top the list. We will be
back - and on a Shabbat!”
• In Community Buzz (September
25) Alan Bauskin, informed us that
there were presently 12 Jewish
families resident in Windhoek.
SOPHIATOWN/
JOHANNESBURG
Marcia Parness on her father’s
pharmacy:
“The dispensary had a wonderful
‘medicinal’ smell which I can still
smell in my head. If medicine had
to be ordered from a wholesaler
and a patient needed it that day,
then, after he locked up the shop
for the day, my father, still in his
white coat, would go into the heart
of Sophiatown to deliver the medicine.
“He was greeted on all sides and
was highly respected as ‘the doctor’.
“He had an ear for languages and
picked up some of the many languages that made up the kaleidoscope of Sophiatown. When he
asked patients about where the
pain was, it often turned out to be
in a totally different place when
they explained in their own language.
SA JEWISH REPORT
“The pavements were not paved
and the dusty children played with
hoops cut from paint tins and
homemade box carts. There was
always someone playing the penny
whistle, a rough xylophone, a drum
or box-banjo. A few people had
wind-up
gramophones
with
records that were played over and
over again.
“On some corners there was a
fire in a burnt drum with mealies
being cooked and sold. You could
also get your hair cut with Number
2 clippers. Sophiatown was a hurlyburly of colour, noise and scents.
“However, I also remember the
rioting. When the tram fares were
increased, the people were angry
and they boycotted the trams. As
trams went by they threw stones at
them. I remember that my father
locked his shop and put the shutters on as stones landed on the roof
in a rat-a-tat (of noise).
“Then came the official letter
that Sophiatown was to be evacuated, its residents evicted and the
ramshackle houses flattened. I
remember my parents sitting
behind closed doors and worrying
whether they would be able to
make a living somewhere else.
“They heard that there was a Mr
Gardi, an Indian, who had been
given land in Johannesburg originally by President Paul Kruger He
could not get a lease because of
the Group Areas Act but my parents liked the position which was
near bus stops, so that their old
customers could easily get to
them.
“It was a much smaller shop but
they felt that it would be suitable
for a new, although uncertain
beginning. Their reputation followed them and customers flocked
to the new shop and business
thrived.
“I remember lots of names like
Miriam Makeba, Elizabeth Julius,
Reverend Trevor Huddleston and
Govan Mbeki, father of Thabo.
“I pay tribute to my father, Louis
Gelvan, who was a true healer and
a gentleman.”
Kingdom with the 1931 Springboks. He became an attorney in
Johannesburg and was in practice for 42 years, specialising in
labour law and appearing for
labour trade unions in cases
against the Nationalist Government.
He was an outspoken speaker
against apartheid in sport at a
time when it was unfashionable
and even risky to do so.
When he retired in 1979, he
moved to the fledgling Legal
Resources Centre where he
helped the poor and the disadvantaged. He passed away in January
1992 at the age of 80.
The Legal Resources Centre
established a scholarship in his
honour for his contribution to the
community.
The City Press wrote of him at
the time: “Our memory of his
integrity, humility and caring
and his tireless fight for justice
for all, lives on.
• The “Natives” Resettlement
Board were responsible for moving
the residents out of Sophiatown to
Meadowlands in Soweto. The
forcible removals started on
February 9 1955. Father Trevor
Huddleston, of the Community of
the Resurrection, the Anglican
priest in Sophiatown said: “The
show of force today is a disgrace to
any civilised community.”
Sophiatown was declared a
“White Area” and renamed Triomf
(Triumph). Today it is again called
Sophiatown, its original name.
• G-d blessed Jacob with the
name Israel, which means “fighter for G-d”. The name change was
meant to convey an important
message: Jews should never
adopt the teaching of “turn the
other cheek”. Not to fight back is
to invite the second slap.
The new name carries with it a
responsibility to fight for what
you believe in. I am not sure if the
founders of the modern-day State
of Israel had that in mind when
they gave the new country its
name, but it certainly is an
important idea for a country surrounded by enemies dedicated to
its destruction.
(By Rabbi Benjamin Blech, a
tenth generation rabbi and
author of 10 books. He is an associate professor of Talmud at
Yeshiva University in New York
City.)
JANSENVILLE/
JOHANNESBURG
Morris Zimerman was born in
Jansenville in the Western Cape
and went on to be the favourite
son the of town. He was a rugby
Springbok and toured the United
POTCHEFSTROOM
One of the pillars of the Potchefstroom Jewish community, Israel
(Issy) Gamsu passed away on
July 9 1978 after a long illness.
Gamsu who was 82, left Nigel in
1926 with his brother, Maurice
and entered the butchery business and cattle ranching.
Issy and his widow, Sonia, were
staunch members of the community and worked together in every
sphere. He was chairman of the
Chevrah Kadisha for many years,
secretary to the congregation for
25 years and completely involved
in the Zionist Society, besides
helping non-denominational bodies for all worthy causes.
Issy Gamsu is survived by his
widow, Sonia, two sons, Bernard
of Potchefstroom and Sydney of
Sandton and a daughter Carole
Duveen of Johannesburg, seven
grandchildren,
his
brother
Maurice and a sister, Anne
Ostrow of Heidelberg. (Zionist
Record).
7
AROUND THE WORLD
NEWS IN BRIEF
POLICE PROBING NEW YORK SIGNS WITH 'KILL JEWS'
NEW YORK - Police are investigating a series of incidents
involving the spread of antiSemitic material in Brooklyn.
Last week Wednesday, residents of the Bay Ridge neighbourhood found hundreds of 2inch signs with the words "Kill
Jews" across part of a street, the
New York Daily News reported.
Authorities said identical
signs had been found littering
other parts of the New York borough on at least two other occasions this month.
The
New
York
Police
Department's Hate Crimes unit
reportedly has launched an
investigation.
"This isn't a one-time situation," Herb Karasik, president of
the Bay Ridge Jewish Centre,
told the Daily News. "This has
been an ongoing problem." (JTA)
8
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
AROUND THE WORLD
NEWS IN BRIEF
OBAMA OFFICIAL: US DEVELOPING 'COMPREHENSIVE' IRAN
SANCTIONS PLAN
Palestinian demonstrators raise flags and chant slogans during an October 5 demonstration in Ramallah
against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to delay sending the Goldstone
Commission report to the UN Security Council. (PHOTOGRAPH: ISSAM RIMAWI/FLASH 90/JTA)
A victory for Israel in
Goldstone delay, fury
among Palestinians
URIEL HEILMAN
NEW YORK
IT LONG has been considered
almost axiomatic at the United
Nations that there’s no real sense
for Israel to try to muster opposition to UN resolutions it considers
hostile, particularly when those
resolutions don’t carry the force
of law.
The powerful 56-member ArabMuslim bloc known as the
Organisation of the Islamic
Conference, coupled with the complacency of Western governments, has made passage of antiIsrael resolutions in bodies such
as the General Assembly and the
UN Human Rights Council in
Geneva a virtual guarantee.
So supporters of Israel were
surprised and pleased when the
Geneva-based council elected last
week to delay a vote on endorsing
the Goldstone report on the IsraelHamas war - effectively setting
aside a resolution considered negative for Israel - until the council’s
next session in March.
But the firestorm of controversy it generated among Palestinians may fuel a new effort to
take the matter directly to the UN
Security Council.
Insiders say strong pressure by
US and Israeli officials prompted
the delay last week, with Israel
warning that a vote sending the
report to the Security Council
would derail Israeli-Palestinian
security cooperation and US-sponsored peace negotiations.
“I think the Palestinians got the
message that they had to make a
choice: Either co-operate with
Israel, including on the peace
process, or pursue a futile political campaign based on the onesided Goldstone report,” said
Hillel Neuer, executive director of
UN Watch.
Once the Palestinian Authority,
which is not a member of the 47member Human Rights Council,
asked to delay the vote, other Arab
and Muslim countries followed
suit. The Pakistani delegation to
the council made the announcement last Friday on behalf of the
Muslim bloc, officially citing the
need for more time to discuss the
Goldstone report.
Advocates for Israel took the
delay as a hopeful sign that strong
pressure by Israel and its allies
actually can yield positive results.
“What happened on the Goldstone report suggests, maybe for
the first time, that complacency
on Israel may have eroded,” said
Felice Gaer, an expert on UN
affairs and the director of the
American Jewish Committee’s
Jacob Blaustein Institute for
Human Rights. “It’s a phenomenal
outcome. I don’t believe this has
ever happened before.”
The move infuriated Palestinians in Gaza and the West
Bank. Hundreds of protesters
took to the streets in Ramallah,
and Hamas officials in Gaza
accused Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas of
treason. Barraged by the criticism, Abbas denied asking for a
delay in the vote and said he
would launch an investigation to
discover how the delay came
about.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas
leader and deposed PA prime minister, rejected Abbas’ response as
dissembling.
“Abbas gave the orders to delay
voting on the report,” Haniyeh
said.
This week, with the criticism
showing no signs of abating, the
Palestinian Authority switched
gears: On Tuesday, Palestinian
negotiator Saeb Erakat told the
French news agency AFP that
Abbas was considering asking the
General Assembly or Security
Council to take up the Goldstone
recommendations. Such a request
would be a major breach of UN
protocol, since the report officially is still under deliberation at the
Human Rights Council, the body
that commissioned it.
The 574-page report by former
South African jurist Richard
Goldstone, which was released in
mid-September, was commissioned amid Israel-Hamas fighting last January. Israel considered the mandate - to probe
Israel’s “grave violations of
human rights” - biased and
refused to co-operate.
The report found both Israel
and Hamas guilty of “war crimes”
and called for the UN Security
Council to send the matter to the
International Criminal Court if
Israel did not launch its own
investigation of the alleged war
crimes within six months.
The Human Rights Council - a
body that has been fixated on
Israel since its founding three
years ago, with some 80 per cent
of resolutions focused on the
Jewish state - was expected after
last week’s debate to vote on a resolution endorsing the Goldstone
recommendations. But that never
happened.
Officials at Israel’s UN mission
in Geneva declined to talk to JTA
about Israel’s role in the matter,
saying they had been instructed
specifically by Jerusalem to keep
mum on the issue.
Some media reports quoted
anonymous PA officials as saying
they were furious that Israeli officials had told reporters late last
week that the Palestinian delegation was behind the delay.
Aside from the report itself,
which Israeli President Shimon
Peres called a “mockery of history” because it did not “distinguish between the aggressor and
a state exercising its right for selfdefence”, the Israeli government
has a fundamental problem with
being censured for taking action
to protect itself against Hamas
rocket attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu articulated this
argument last month in his
address to the U.N. General
Assembly. Given that the United
Nations was silent when Hamas
carried out intense rockets attack
fire on Israel following the Israeli
withdrawal from Gaza in 2005,
Netanyahu said, censuring Israel
for striking back during last
January’s war against Hamas
would destroy Israel’s willingness
to take risks for peace.
“Will you stand with Israel or
will you stand with the terrorists?” Netanyahu told the General
Assembly. “If Israel is again
asked to take more risks for
peace, we must know today that
you will stand with us tomorrow.
Only if we have the confidence
that we can defend ourselves can
we take further risks for peace.”
(JTA)
WASHINGTON - A top US
Treasury Department official
has said the Obama administration is developing a "comprehensive" plan for sanctions on
Iran that would involve a variety of actions.
The plan "takes into account
that no single sanction is a 'silver bullet'," said Stuart Levey,
undersecretary for terrorism
and financial intelligence, in
testimony before the Senate
Committee
on
Banking,
Housing and Urban Affairs.
"We will need to impose
measures simultaneously in
many different forms in order
to be effective.
"It also takes into account
Iran's potential vulnerabilities
and those activities that have
the greatest influence on Iran's
decision-makers," he said.
"As we consider various
measures, we are particularly
mindful of potential unintended consequences on the people
of Iran and the internal
dynamic now playing out in
that country."
Levey said he could not get
into specifics in an open hearing about what sanctions were
under consideration.
He said the United States was
"working closely with our allies
as we put together this strategy" because "financial measures are most effective when
imposed as part of a broadbased effort with the support of
the largest possible international coalition."
Levey cautioned that "we
should be realistic about the
ability of sanctions to achieve
our political and security objectives with Iran," but that if "we
accurately target the key vulnerabilities and fissures in Iran
and then implement our plan
with a broad coalition of governments and key private sector actors, we can at least
demonstrate to the Iranian government that there are serious
costs to any continued refusal
to co-operate with the international community". (JTA)
MENEM, SIX OTHERS INDICTED IN AMIA OBSTRUCTION
BUENOS AIRES - Former
Argentina President Carlos
Menem and six others who
served under him, have been
indicted for obstructing the
investigation of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA centre.
Federal Judge Ariel Lijo
accused Menem, who was
president from 1989 to 1999;
his brother Munir Menem;
former judge Juan Jose
Galeano; former intelligence
agency head Hugo Anzorreguy; former police chief
Jorge "Fino" Palacios; and
two others, of being "abettors
of concealment, ideological
falseness, disruption of proof
and authority abuse" in the
aftermath of the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires
Jewish community centre,
which killed 85 people and
injured hundreds.
Lijo imposed a bond on
Menem and the others, but did
not order their confinement.
Palacios, who returned to the
police chief post earlier this
year, was forced out in August
because of his suspected
involvement in the bombing.
Argentine authorities believe
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, was
behind the attack. It has long
been suspected that senior
Argentine officials quashed the
inquiry in the investigation's
aftermath under pressure and
inducement from Iran.
The new indictments bring
to 10 those awaiting trial for
obstructing the investigation.
Argentina is also seeking the
extradition of seven Iranians,
including the current defence
minister, for their alleged roles
in the attack.
"We knew about the concealment since the very first
moments after the attack,"
Adriana Reisfeld, the president
of Memoria Activa, a group of
victims' relatives and their
supporters, told JTA.
"We have been waiting for
this moment for 15 years. The
concealment now is as punishable as the attack itself. The
question is, what have they
concealed?"
Reisfeld is the sister of
Noemi Reisfeld, an AMIA
social worker who died in the
attack. (JTA)
YA'ALON CANCELS BRITAIN TRIP OVER ARREST FEARS
JERUSALEM - An Israeli
deputy prime minister has
cancelled a planned trip to
Britain out of fear that he
would be arrested.
Strategic Affairs Minister
Moshe Ya'alon was scheduled
to attend a fundraising dinner
by the British Jewish National
Fund on behalf of Benji's
Home for Israeli soldiers with
no family in the country.
But the Israeli Foreign
Ministry's legal department
advised Ya'alon that proPalestinian groups could ask a
British court to have him
arrested and put on trial for
war crimes, specifically the
assassination of a senior
Hamas terrorist in 2002, in
which 14 civilians were killed.
Ya'alon served as chief of
staff of the Israel Defence
Forces at the time of the
assassination. He left the post
in 2005.
The Israeli legal team
warned that despite his being
a government minister, he
likely would not be given
diplomatic immunity. A lawsuit could be filed under the
1988 Criminal Justice Act,
which gives courts in England
and Wales universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases.
Ya'alon's spokesman announced the cancellation of
the trip on Monday.
The cancellation comes less
than a week after a British
attorney filed a lawsuit
against
Israeli
Defence
Minister Ehud Barak on
behalf of several Palestinian
families who were victims of
Israel's military offensive in
Gaza, on suspicion of committing war crimes.
A London judge ruled that
while Barak's war crimes
were well documented, he
enjoyed diplomatic immunity
on the trip, during which he
met with Prime Minister
Gordon Brown and Foreign
Secretary David Miliband to
discuss the Middle East peace
process, Gaza and Iran. (JTA)
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
9
Last Warsaw Ghetto Uprising commander dies
WARSAW - Tributes poured in following
the death of Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.
Edelman died last Friday in Warsaw at the
age of 90.
“He will remain in my memory as a
fighting hero, a man of great courage,”
said Shevach Weiss, former Israeli ambassador to Poland and former head of the
Knesset. “He never ceased in his struggle
for human freedom and for Poland’s freedom.”
A cardiologist who after the Second
World War lived and worked in the
central city of Lodz, Edelman joined the anti-communist Solidarity
movement in 1980 and later fought
for other civic and human rights
causes, becoming a moral authority
in Poland. After the fall of communism, he was awarded Poland’s
highest civilian honour, the Order of
the White Eagle. He also was awarded the French Legion of Honour and
an honorary degree from Yale.
Lech
Walesa,
the
former
Solidarity leader who became Polish
president after the fall of communism, called Edelman “an upright,
unequalled human being. There are
no words to express the loss.”
Said French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner: “France has lost
a hero. He was a man who thought and did
the unthinkable.”
The United States stands with Poland as
it mourns the loss of a great man,” US
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly
said last Saturday. “We extend our sincer-
Jews captured by German
troops during the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising in April-May
1943. This photograph
appeared in the Stroop Report,
an album compiled by SS
Major General Juergen Stroop,
commander of German forces
that suppressed the Warsaw
ghetto uprising. The album
was introduced as evidence at
the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg. In the
decades since the trial this
photo has become one of the
iconographic images of the
Holocaust.
est condolences to the family and friends of
Mr Edelman and salute his life dedicated to
the defence of human dignity and freedom.”
Edelman’s funeral was held last Friday
at Warsaw’s main Jewish cemetery. (JTA)
AROUND THE WORLD
NEWS IN BRIEF
GRAYSON REGRETS USE OF TERM 'HOLOCAUST'
WASHINGTON - A Florida congressman
says he regrets using the term "holocaust" to describe the state of the US
healthcare system.
"I am Jewish and have relatives who
died
in
the
Holocaust,"
US
Representative
Alan
Grayson,
a
Democrat, wrote in a letter last week
Friday to the Florida regional director of
the Anti-Defamation League, Andrew
Rosenkranz.
"In no way did I mean to minimise the
Holocaust. I regret the choice of words,
and I will not repeat it."
Grayson was responding to a letter
from Rosenkranz, who noted that an earlier Grayson statement using the term
holocaust "may not have been the best
choice of words".
Rosenkranz said the statement was
"more than a poor choice of words" and
that "using the Holocaust as an analogy
for flaws in the current healthcare system was inappropriate and served only
to trivialise the murder of six million
Jews and millions of others.
Grayson made the statement that the
healthcare system was a "holocaust in
America" on September 30 as a response
to criticism of his comments the previous day that the GOP position on healthcare reform was "Republicans want you
to die quickly". (JTA)
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10
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
OPINION AND ANALYSIS
FORUM FOR DIVERSE VIEWS
Shministim:
visionaries or
misguided idealists?
ALMOST ANYONE will endorse the ideal of a
world where people aren’t drafted into armies
and sent into battle to kill and possibly be killed.
Bob Dylan’s iconic 1960s ballad “Masters of War”
raged against those whose policies call for combat: “You hide in your mansions, while young
people’s blood / Flows out of their bodies and is
buried in the mud...”
And almost anyone will instinctively want to
identify with sentiments of conscientious objectors refusing to bear arms and kill. Indeed, many
countries recognise the right of ideological
“pacifists” not be drafted into the military.
Sadly, however, war is a reality in the world.
And sometimes it is just. Who would dispute the
morality of the war to destroy Hitler? Or the Yom
Kippur war in Israel, when the country’s survival was at risk?
The Palestinians’ struggle to regain dignity
and independence is also just, but not their
means - they could have achieved their independent state several times over during the past 60
years, if they had put down their arms and relinquished violence.
The three young Israeli conscientious objectors - the shministim - currently visiting South
Africa to coincide with the 25th anniversary of
South Africa’s “End Conscription Campaign”
(ECC) during apartheid, do not come as pacifists.
They refuse to serve in the IDF because it is an
“occupying army” in the West Bank.
Are these shministim a vision of the future brave people standing up as pioneers towards a
peaceful world? Or are they idealistic, but misguided youngsters being exploited by others
whose agenda is to undermine Israel, rather
than achieve peace?
They are a tiny minority in their country,
where most citizens accept that if Israel is to survive, they must do military service, even if they
don’t always agree with policies of a particular
government. Will history prove the shministim
right? Or will they in the future be a trivial historical footnote in a region where gigantic forces
battled for years to destroy each other and ultimately made peace because there was no other
way?
Their manifesto states what they are against.
But what are they for? What are they willing to
fight for? How will the IDF get out of the West
Bank without Israel - and the shministim themselves - being mortally threatened? Who will
safeguard planes landing at Ben-Gurion Airport,
for example, within easy range of rockets that
could be fired from the West Bank, as they were
from Gaza after Israel left there?
Survey after survey shows the majority of
Israelis would leave the West Bank - and remove
settlements - if it would lead to peace.
Politics is the art of the possible. No Israeli
politician would survive if he withdrew from the
West Bank without a clear assurance that it
would bring peace.
The purported similarity of the shministim to
the ECC, which fought against apartheid - in
which a tiny white minority ruled by force over a
huge black majority - is a lie used to reinforce the
bigger lie that Israel is an “apartheid state”.
The overwhelming majority of South African
Jewry will reject the shministims’ stance - but
they have at least challenged people’s comfort
zones. That is always a good thing.
Aside from the actual merits of their standpoint, however, the shministim have unfortunately - like other “alternative” Jewish voices in
the past - aroused the ugly tendency of people in
this community to vilify those with whom they
disagree, rather than engaging rationally with
their arguments.
This is also apparent in personal attacks made
on Mr Justice Richard Goldstone for his report
on the Gaza war, epitomised by a letter sent to
the Jewish Report which we declined to publish
on the letters page. It said: “What a shame that
Gold is your name! Your ashes will be scattered
over Gaza and your soul will be lost forever.”
That is not the way to achieve either understanding or peace.
Goldstone: Report flawed, but
personal attacks unwarranted
I HAVE always admired Richard
Goldstone . He may not have been the
heroic Herculean judge as was Oliver
Schreiner or John Didcott, but there
was no better legal pragmatist during
the apartheid era than Goldstone.
He unerringly seemed to know when
to make a decision that would prod
change without government reversal. It
contributed to a number of successes
for enlightened labour law and put the
final nail in the coffin of the Group
Areas Act.
So, why would so astute a jurist have
taken on so fraught an enterprise as the
enquiry into Operation Cast Lead?
Agreed, he ensured that the terms of
reference were extended to include
Hamas’ rocket attacks on Sderot and
other villages and towns in Israel, but
he kept Prof Christine Chinkin as a
member of the panel when she had
already committed herself to a position
adverse to Israel.
Could he further have underestimated the power of Israeli diplomacy and
the shocking reputation of the Human
Rights Council which appears to be
more concerned with Israeli abuses of
human rights than with the most egregious serial offenders of humanitarian
law who pontificate so hypocritically on
the Council?
These questions are prompted by the
controversy surrounding the report. So
let us turn to the core of the findings
which have elicited so much condemnation, heat and anger. It is to be found in
paragraph 1690: “The Mission concludes that what occurred in just over
three weeks at the end of 2008 and by
the beginning of 2009, was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to
punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its
local economic capacity both to work
and to provide for itself, and to force
upon it an ever increasing sense of
dependency and vulnerability.”
There appears to be five separate
lines of criticism. In the first place
there is a critique of the factual findings which underpin the core conclusion.
THE JURY IS
OUT
Dennis Davis
Secondly the report is said to be
unfair in that almost all the blame is
heaped on Israel with Hamas being
subjected to but lukewarm censure.
Thirdly, the application of international law is subversive of the right of
self-defence against the kind of terrorism conducted by Hamas.
Fourthly, Israel is unfairly criticised while many, far worse instances
of human rights abuse from other
countries, go uncensured.
Finally, Mr Justice Goldstone acted
with animus against Israel.
There can be no doubt that some of
the factual findings are based upon
untested evidence. But much of the
criticism is itself troubling and plain
wrong. For example, Ma’ariv suggests
that a crucial finding that Israel
attacked the Abd Rabbo family in
which the daughters were killed after
a white flag was raised, omits how the
family allowed their home to be
employed as a Hamas “fortress”.
But paragraphs 786ff indicate that
the report finds that when the attack
in which children were killed, the
Israeli forces outside the house were
in relaxed mode, certainly not indicative of facing an active fortress.
Much of the factual disputes, however, are difficult to resolve without a
comprehensive examination and
cross-examination of Israel’s version.
The second criticism has been more
central to the critique of the report.
And here there is manifest merit in
the argument of the critics. While the
report condemns Hamas’ attacks, it
appears to go through the motions of
censure rather than dealing with the
implications for any country of incessant attacks on innocent citizens.
To a large extent, the report
remained faithful to international law
but, it is arguable that current norms
of international law, particularly the
application of the principles of proportionality and distinction, have not dealt
fairly with the right of defence by a
state against an organisation committed to the destruction of the state and
which attacks its citizens on a consistent basis.
All of these arguments concern arguments of principle and fact. Contrast
this proposition to the disgraceful, personal attacks launched against Richard
Goldstone such as (by) Avrom Krengel
who accuses Goldstone of a blood libel,
or others who call him a self-hating
Jew.
It is perhaps unfortunate that none of
these people heeded the recent call of
Orthodox
Chief
Rabbi
Warren
Goldstein to desist from lashon harah,
even if we profoundly disagree with
the views expressed.
Does Yom Kippur have no tangible
lesson for us? Goldstone is a very fine
judge, who for years was heralded by
our community. Judges, even as good
as Goldstone, make mistakes, but that
is inherent in the process of adjudication, not because of bad faith-certainly
not with a jurist of Goldstones’ calibre.
The argument regarding lack of
equivalence is obvious - Israel cannot
be compared, for example, with Sudan,
Burma, Zimbabwe or Iran, all of whom
constitute far greater threats to international law and all of whom must be
condemned at every opportunity.
But Israel is a democracy and it
should not be held to these perverse
standards. If white phosphorous was
employed, if any of the truly troubling
findings of the report against the IDF
are correct, then there must be a proper, legal and transparent response.
The obvious solution, following upon
the precedent of the commission
which investigated Shatila and Sabra,
is to appoint a jurist of the stature of
retired Chief Justice Aharon Barak
and let him bring both sunlight and
then true closure to these troubling
issues.
It’s Succot time in Jerusalem again
Succahs fill the fervently Orthodox Jerusalem neighbourhood Batei Ungarin for the holiday. (Kobi Gideon / Flash 90 / JTA)
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
11
OPINION AND ANALYSIS
FORUM FOR DIVERSE VIEWS
‘Nordic superiority’ based on a false premise
TOWARDS THE end of the 19th century,
beliefs in the innate superiority of the
Nordic races were becoming fashionable.
Such theorising would reach its
gruesome culmination in the Nazi catastrophe, with its cult of bermensch
Aryanism inspiring the dispossession,
subjugation and sometimes even outright
extermination of other races deemed
“inferior”.
Theories of Nordic-Teutonic racial
superiority were not an exclusively
German phenomenon, but were very
much in vogue in Anglophone circles as
well. The Germanised British philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain did
much to popularise such ideas, which
were also popular in the then AngloSaxon dominated United States. Ku Klux
Klan ideologue Hiram Wesley Evans thus
could refer to “the so-called Nordic race
which, for all its faults, has given the
world almost the whole of modern civilisation”.
President Warren Harding’s lineage
could unblushingly be described by his
campaign manager as being of “the finest
pioneer blood, Anglo-Saxon, German,
Scotch-Irish and Dutch”.
This was, of course, a time of pronounced Anglo-Saxon and Germanic
ascendancy. Britain’s empire covered a
quarter of the globe, her navy famously
dominated the seas and her economic
hegemony dated back at least a century.
Germany, after centuries of fragmentation, was now a dynamic united entity,
economically and militarily formidable
and arguably at the height of her intellectual and cultural influence. Across the
Atlantic, the US was flexing its muscles
with increasing confidence in its nascent
BARBARIC
YAWP
David Saks
sense of Manifest Destiny.
By contrast, the non-Nordic civilisations were pretty much in the doldrums.
India and its immediate neighbours were
British colonies, while pre-Revolution
China was sunk in a humiliating torpor.
The Islamic world was lagging hopelessly behind its Euro-Christian rivals,
with most Muslim countries being
European colonies while the remainder
fell mainly within the disintegrating
Ottoman Empire.
Spain had ceased to be a world power at
least two centuries before, Italy had only
just emerged from centuries of colonisation by the Austrian Hapsburgs, Imperial
Russia was in terminal crisis and even
France, humiliatingly thrashed in the
Franco-Prussian War, was playing second fiddle to its powerful German neighbour.
Beliefs in an innate “Nordic” superiority were thus understandable in the context of the times, yet (apart from the
moral issues it raised) how correct was
that assumption in the light of world history?
A broad overview of the waxing and
waning of major world civilisations over
the past five millennia of recorded history, will have revealed even then that the
prevailing Nordic hegemony was actually quite a recent phenomenon and far
Violent clashes in Jerusalem
ratchet up Israeli-Arab tensions
MARCY OSTER
JERUSALEM
TENSIONS BETWEEN Israelis and Arabs
simmered this week as Arab rioters
clashed with Israeli police and Palestinian
leaders accused Israel of trying to
“Judaise” Jerusalem.
The clashes began on September 27, Yom
Kippur eve, when some 150 Arabs stoned a
dozen or so Jews visiting the Temple
Mount. Riots spread to several Arab neighbourhoods in the Old City and lasted
throughout Yom Kippur.
The violence resurfaced this week when
Israel restricted access to the Temple
Mount while thousands of Jewish pilgrims
visited the Western Wall for Succot observances.
“We will liberate al-Aqsa with blood and
fire,” an Islamic leader, Sheik Ra’ad Salah,
told supporters in eastern Jerusalem,
referring to the mosque on the Temple
Mount. Salah was arrested on Tuesday for
incitement.
“We call on the Palestinian public to confront Israel and its plans,” Palestinian
Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad
said in a statement on Monday.
With Arab religious figures calling on
Palestinians to flock to the Temple Mount
to protect Muslim holy sites, some Israeli
commentators said the rhetoric was reminiscent of the fall of 2000, when violent
clashes around the High Holidays erupted
into the second intifada.
But a deputy police commissioner,
Mickey Levy, told the Israeli news outlet
Ynet that this kind of violence was common during the Jewish holidays.
Mohammed Dahlan, a former Palestinian
security chief and Fatah Party official,
told Reuters that a full-blown uprising
would only harm Palestinians.
“We may resort to popular action or civil
action. We have an open mind on all legitimate methods permitted by international
law,” Dahlan said. “But we won’t push the
Palestinian people into a disaster.”
The Palestinian Authority condemned
Israel for allowing Jews to visit the Temple
Mount and called on the international
community “to force Israel to halt its
efforts to Jewify the city”.
Israeli authorities said they were interested only in quelling the violence (though
Israeli officials, including Jerusalem’s
mayor, frequently talk about the need to
bolster the city’s Jewish character).
On Monday, Israeli police announced
that they had restricted access to the
mosques on the Temple Mount to men
over the age of 50 after discovering wheelbarrows full of boulders throughout the
compound - which they took as a sign of a
planned riot.
A day earlier, rioters in the Old City pelted police with bottles and rocks, and in
eastern Jerusalem, Palestinians threw
stones and firebombs at Israeli Border
Police near the Shuafat refugee camp.
Several demonstrators were arrested and
at least two police officers were injured.
The annual Succot priestly blessing ceremony at the Western Wall took place on
Monday morning without incident. Later
in the day, however, Palestinian youths
attacked worshippers on Jerusalem’s
Mount of Olives and an Israeli soldier was
stabbed in the neck while inspecting a
Palestinian bus stopped at a checkpoint
outside Jerusalem.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat
accused Israel of deliberately fanning the
flames of unrest in order to solidify
Israel’s hold on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told Israel
Radio that the provocateurs should be
stopped and that the violence serves neither Israelis nor Palestinians.
No incidents were reported during
Tuesday’s annual Jerusalem March, when
70 000 people - including non-Jewish pilgrims marking the Feast of the
Tabernacles - paraded through Jerusalem’s streets. (JTA)
from typical of what had gone before.
The cradle of civilisation was not
Northern Europe, but the Middle East. It
was in Mesopotamia that the first great
human strides in such areas of literature,
philosophy, architecture, law and science
began
dramatically
manifesting.
Thereafter major civilisations, lasting for
many centuries, emerged throughout the
region - Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian,
Sumerian and Babylonian amongst others. Jewish civilisation was based in
Ancient Israel but was nurtured in other
Middle Eastern countries as well.
In addition to its own intrinsic richness,
it would ultimately give rise to two of the
greatest religious-based civilisations the
world would ever know, Christianity and
Islam. Meanwhile further east, India and
China were establishing their own vastly
impressive civilisations.
Europe too eventually began to come
into the picture, but when it did it was not
through its “Nordic” races, then frankly
mired in primitive barbarity, but through
its “deep south” Greek peoples. The myriad achievements of the Grecian civilisation continue to reverberate to this day.
After Greece’s decline, it was the Romans’
turn - another Southern European power.
Far from participating in this dramatically rich period of human creativity, the
Germanic peoples’ role was largely
destructive, doing much to plunge Europe
into an extended “Dark Ages”. The socalled Renaissance that followed was
largely an Italian phenomenon.
Meanwhile, Islam had burst onto the
scene, creating a vast empire that for centuries was well in advance of the
Christian world in terms of scholarship,
governance and economic management.
After
Spain,
another
Southern
European country, finally rid itself of
Islamic occupation it embarked on an
extended period as a dominant European
power, during which time it established
an overseas empire to rival in size anything that had gone before.
Little Portugal also made a significant
impact in that area. Spain’s eclipse in the
17th century was followed by the cultural
and military dominance of the French
(Latins, not Nordics) until well into the
19th century.
Only in the 1600s, in fact, did Northern
Europeans start emerging as major players on the world stage. The Dutch established a sizable overseas empire and
enjoyed an impressive period of economic
and cultural influence.
England emerged much the stronger
after its civil war and proceeded to lay the
foundations of its subsequent meteoric
rise. Even Sweden enjoyed a status as a
great power for a time. Germany
remained fragmented, but its Prussian
component was becoming a force to be
reckoned with.
Thus, the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic
period of influence was in reality a relatively late phenomenon that had been preceded by millennia of supposedly backward non-Aryan races dominating the
world stage.
What is more, today’s resurgence of the
Southern and Eastern Asian suggests
that the era of North European dominance is already coming to an end. It’s all
a turning wheel, in other words. Maybe
one of these centuries, it might be subSaharan Africa’s turn, that is if the
Botswanian rather than Zimbabwean
example is followed.
12
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
TAPESTRY
ART, BOOKS, DANCE, FILM, THEATRE
ARTS MATTERS
COMPILED BY
ROBYN SASSEN
Call 084-319-7844 or
[email protected] at
least one week prior to
publication
Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein: In the Mandela, “Hannah
and Miley: The Best of Both
Girls Show”, until October 20. In
the Fringe, from October 14
“Happy Shabalala” with Harry
Sideropoulos, (011) 877-6800.
Linder Auditorium, Parktown: Week 2 of the JPO’s season, on October 14 and 15 features Beethoven’s Fourth Piano
Concerto and his “Pastorale”
Symphony. Soloist is Ben Schoeman (piano); Conductor: Nicholas Cleobury, (011) 789-2733. On
October 17, the Johannesburg
Musical Society hosts pianist
David Lively, playing works by
Mendelssohn,
Schumann,
Gershwin and Ravel, (011) 7825287.
Lyric Theatre, Gold Reef
City, Ormonde: “Knights of
Music”, co-produced by Richard
Loring and Bryan Schimmel,
October 14 - November 8, (011)
248-5168.
Market Theatre, Newtown: In
the Laager, “Brer Rabbit” directed by Gina Shmukler, October 15
- December 20; and in the Barney
Simon, Mike van Graan’s
“Bafana Republic 3: Penalty
Shootout”, until November 1,
(011) 832-1641.
Montecasino Theatre Complex, Fourways: In the Studio,
Alan Swerdlow directs “Travels
with my Aunt”, on until November 1; in the Pieter Toerien,
Swerdlow directs Tony Awardwinner “G-d of Carnage”, until
November 15. In Teatro,
Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s “Cats”,
until November 22, phone (011)
511-1988.
National Children’s Theatre,
Parktown: “Puss in Boots”,
until October 17, (011) 484-1584.
Ninth Street, Parkhurst: Stanley Peskin’s opera evening, featuring the work of Renée
Fleming on October 11 is sold
out. Contingent on demand, the
evening will be repeated on
November 22, 072-240-2997.
Old Mutual Theatre on the
Square, Sandton: “The Blues
Brothers” with Johan Baird and
Alwyn Kotze, until October 24,
(011) 883-8606.
RCHCC, Oaklands: “Sound out
the Image”, a talk by composer
Phillip Miller, on October 18. On
the same evening, an exhibition, “Works by Men”, featuring
work by Sidney Abramowitch,
Monty Sack, Pascual Tarazona,
Anton Uys opens, (011) 728-8088.
Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg: “Alexis Preller:
Africa, the sun and shadows”, a
retrospective,
October
13December 5, (011) 631-1889.
Vodadome, Vodaworld, Midrand: Mzansi Productions performs Bizet’s “Carmen”, October 15-23, (011) 482-3727.
Preserving the richness of
Yiddish culture through film
ROBYN SASSEN
THIS WEEK, the Rabbi Cyril
Harris Community Centre hosted
a coup for Jewish film culture.
Sharon Rivo, an expert on
Jewish film and the executive
director and co-founder of the
National Centre for Jewish Film,
over three decades came to speak Sharon Rivo.
of the centre’s history and mission, (PHOTOand to appeal to South Africans GRAPH COURwho may have films which they TESY RABBI
CYRIL HARRIS
wish to donate to the centre.
COMMUNITY
On her first visit to South Africa,
CENTRE)
Rivo was upbeat in her explanation
of the project, appealing to South Africans who
might, during the ‘30s or thereabouts, have had
the wherewithal to have travelled back to Europe
and filmed the environment there, or the Jewish
environment locally. She said that home movies
had as much relevance to research into this
bygone era as commercially produced film.
Rivo’s project bears great similarities to that of
Aaron Lansky, who established the National
Yiddish Book Centre in Massachusetts in 1980,
and that of Henry Sapoznik, the steam behind the
revival of klezmer culture, from the ‘80s.
Rivo was inspired to embark on this project by
her grandmother. “She was born in Radunele in
Lithuania, then moved to Vilna and finally to
Kansas City. I understand Yiddish but do not
speak it fluently. My love and respect for her and
her culture made me want to know more about it,
and ultimately to preserve it. What a film can
bring to the new generation is priceless. We are
just like everybody else, and we want to know
what life was like for the people who lived before
us.”
In 1975 Rivo, with colleagues Miriam Krant and
Edith and Henry Everett, rescued a languishing
collection of ‘30s and ‘40s Yiddish films, from the
collection of director Joe Seiden.
Today they have amassed the largest collection
of Jewish film in the world outside Israel. “We
have about 15 000 cans of film in our archives,”
Rivo commented.
Amassing film is not as simple as it may sound.
In many respects, the films are “rescued” from
the trash - people a generation away from Yiddish
culture and language lose their parents and don’t
know what to do with the 35mm films, the books
and long playing records that their parents cherished. So they throw them away.
She says one must remember that a generation
away from Yiddish culture saw a waning in the
popularity or the perceived significance of
Yiddish.
But once these films are collected, they need to
be restored and preserved. It can cost up to
$100 000 to restore a single film, Rivo explained.
She added that digital technology - DVDs and
videos - was not trusted by archivists as their
preservation value had not been proven, but that
35mm celluloid slides were the most reliable in
terms of restorability. And they’re restored as
such, screened on large formats internationally
in cinemas, “where the richness of the Yiddish
culture is evident through the richness of the film
FELDMAN
ON FILM
Peter Feldman
Pick of the Week
Ugly Truth
Cast: Katherine Heigl, Gerard Butler, Eric
Winter, John Michael Higgins, Nick Searcy,
Kevin Connolly, Cheryl Hines
Director: Robert Luketic
Blonde beauty Katherine Heigl has come a
long way during her relatively short screen
career and is probably best remembered for
her contribution to the popular TV series
“Grey’s Anatomy”.
She has featured in two fun-type movie
excursions, “Knocked Up” and “27 Dresses”,
where her particular talents were well utilised.
A scene from one of
Joseph
Green’s films, featuring Molly Picon.
(PHOTOGRAPH
COURTESY
HTTP://USDIN.DUMES.NET)
Actor
Solomon
Mikhoels.
(PHOTOGRAPH
COURTESY
JEWISHFILM.ORG)
medium”.
Of course the digital remastering of the
German made-for-television film which she
screened at the Rabbi Cyril Harris Community
Centre, offered a diluted insight into the wealth
of Yiddish film culture out there.
The documentary, made in 1991 and narrated by David Mamet, offers an articulate inroad
into the project’s focus, looking at four areas
where Yiddish film was made: Russia, Poland,
Vienna and New York. Each geographical
nexus gave rise to a different type of film, a
story being related and sense of film making
priority.
Beginning with a gloss on the 10th century
birth of Yiddish as a bastardised amalgamation
of Hebrew, Middle High German and the
Romance languages, and documenting an
understanding of its spread through the West,
the film considered how the language was a cradle to the culture of the Jews.
By the time of the Second World War, there
were over 10 million Yiddish speakers in the
world. In the early 19th century, under the leadership of creative minds like Mendele Moicher
Sforim, who in turn influenced the great
Sholem Aleichem and Russian writers and playwrights like Peretz Markish, Peretz Hirschbein,
as well as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish was
common parlance among religions and secular
Jews alike.
Looking at the complexity and wealth of
Yiddish culture in a thumbnail sketch can be
misleading and fraught with important omissions, but suffice it to recall that stories like the
all too familiar Fiddler on the Roof were only
first penned in the ‘60s in America.
Based on tales by Sholem Aleichem, the timeless plight of the hapless and always
G-dfearing Tevye the dairyman, first saw light
of day in popular culture in films made in the
1930s, in Yiddish.
This is where stage-actors-become-film performers like Maurice Schwartz and Esther
Rochel Kaminsker grabbed the centre celluloid
stage. The new technology gave them new
footholds. They also established the roots of
what was to become the Moscow State Yiddish
Theatre.
Solomon Mikhoels was another actor of conNow Katherine, together with mother
Nancy, serve as executive producers here and
you can bet that all the necessary ingredients
have been carefully mixed in order to serve up
a romantic comedy that, though madly contrived, still manages to work some magic.
The key element here is the relationship
between the two leads thrown together to work
on a TV morning show and who have strongly
opposing views on almost everything.
Heigl is cast as uptight Sacramento TV producer Abby Richter, a romantically challenged
individual, in search of Mr Perfect. Her show is
about to be cancelled because of its poor ratings; something has to be done.
Her boss then decides to hire the crass Mike
Chadway (Gerard Butler), a provocative,
straight-talking, un-PC host of the cable access
“advice show”, The Ugly Truth, to give some
intellectual thrust to her show.
As expected, this move fails to please Abby.
Not only was she never consulted on the matter, but she had seen Chadway in action on TV
earlier that morning, and was shocked by his
siderable merit and popularity, starring in his
first film directed by Alexander Granovsky, based
on the Tevye stories. The films offered a quirky
sense of humour and tragedy.
In one, a shipload of brides, part of a deadbeat
business deal, are described in the characteristic
direct lines of early movie culture.
By the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, Mikhoels, as well
as many Yiddish writers and poets of the time,
were murdered by the Stalinist regime. Jewish
theatre had become deemed an activity punishable by death. “His funeral in January 1948 was a
national event,” one of his daughters explains.
“There was a fiddler on the roof, playing kaddish.”
Yiddish film in Poland took root during the ‘30s.
Under the directorship of Joseph Green, the films
engaged with Jewish identity, “not for ghetto culture”, Green explains, “but for the world to understand”.
“I planned the first film with Molly Picon, she
was not a prima donna, she was a prima donnele”,
he comments on her size and youth. Green’s films
were based in folklore traditions.
They comprised bittersweet tales, told with
music, singing and humour. Green continued
making film in Poland through the 1930s. In 1938,
he made two. “I felt that time was running out.”
In New York, the streets between Orchard and
Delancey were where the garment workers
unions at the turn of the 20th century were located. This was the first port of call for many
Yiddish-speaking immigrants.
With European immigration came a burgeoning of a Yiddish Hollywood. Second Avenue, within this urban precinct, housed more than 20
Yiddish-specific theatres. What is left today is
deep nostalgia. Joseph Seiden made 20 films during his prolific career. Edgar Ulmer was another
prominent director of the time.
Actor David Opatoshu who predominated on
early New York stages, supports the NCJF:
“Everyone goes through a stage in life of wanting
to know where they came from. These Yiddish
filmmakers were singers of peace, humanitarianism, ethics and morality.”
Rivo concurred: “Now my grandson can get a
glimpse of the richness of the living culture.”
• Sharon Rivo’s e-mail address: [email protected]
controversial, in-your-face style when he
talked about the ugly truth on what makes
men and women tick. He hit a raw nerve and
the thought of having to work closely with
him every day is a frightening proposition for
her.
Meanwhile, she’s obsessed with ensnaring
her hunky new neighbour, Colin (Eric
Winter). Mike proposes a deal: he’ll offer his
insights into the male psyche and teach her
how to catch Colin if she’ll agree to work with
him. If he fails and Abby is unable to hook her
“perfect man”, he’ll quit. Deal done!
This version of the battle of the sexes is
consistently funny (there is a hilarious scene
involving vibrating underwear) and there is a
nice edge to the repartee between the leads.
Director Robert Luketic’s job is made easier because he has two attractive, photogenic
individuals and the chances are most audiences will find them appealing and watch
them fall in love. One doesn’t really care
whether Gerard Butler’s American accent
slides on occasions as he gets the job done.
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
13
TAPESTRY
ART, BOOKS, DANCE, FILM, THEATRE
Malevolent feel of this bleak, pitiless novel
Summertime by JM Coetzee
(Random House Struik, R295)
REVIEWED BY GWEN PODBREY
THIS IS the third (and, presumably,
final) work in Nobel Prize laureate
JM Coetzee’s series of “fictionalised
memoirs”, which gave us Boyhood
and then Youth. Writing with his
usual austerity, he has cocooned
elements of his own story - including his name - in a life (and death)
involving created characters and
events.
Here Vincent, a young English
biographer is gathering material for
a book about the late, great writer,
John Coetzee, whom he has never
met. In particular, he is focusing on
the years 1972 - 1977, when he
believes Coetzee truly (to be) “finding himself” as a writer.
It was a politically volatile period
in South Africa, in which the
apartheid regime - sensing its own
unsustainability - imposed draconian measures to quash the liberation struggle.
It was also the period in which
(the fictional) Coetzee - after falling
foul of the law in the USA - shared a
house with his elderly father in a
Cape Town suburb and drifted from
one itinerant job to another.
Rather than search for clues to his
subject’s characters in his writings,
Vincent has chosen to interview
people who knew Coetzee well at
that time: Julia, a married Jewish
neighbour who had an affair with
him; his favourite cousin, Margot,
to whom he had been close during
childhood; Adriana, an Angolan
refugee, whose daughter he had
tutored in English ; Martin, an academic he had befriended; and
Sophie, a Frenchwoman who had
taught alongside Coetzee at the
University of Cape Town and had
also been his lover.
Most of the book comprises transcripts of Vincent’s interviews with
these individuals. All of them recall
him as a peculiarly inept, unkempt,
reclusive man, lacking in lifeskills
and unable to engage with people.
Coetzee’s conservatism, distaste
for demonstrative behaviour and
uneasiness in company emerge
again and again. His alienation
from his Afrikaans family was exacerbated by his insistence on carrying out his own house renovations
to defy the convention of using “kaffir” labour to do menial work.
While the interviewees recall him
as intellectually gifted, even ambitious, they describe him as unprepossessing: insipid, humourless,
secretive, incapable of either passion or spontaneity. In short, a man
unable to either love or be loved.
According to their reminiscences,
Coetzee’s only productive dialogue
was the ongoing one he conducted
with himself, a deeply inwardturned, lifelong introspection which
could result in bizarrely inappropriate - even sinister - outbursts from
him in the company of people.
His cousin Margot, for example,
recalls Coetzee spending a weekend
at her farm in Voëlfontein and taking her for a drive to Merweville,
some 20km away. In the course of
the outing, the subject of the
Hottentot language - which he had
studied - had come up.
“What is the point of speaking
Hottentot if no-one else does?” she
had asked him. “The dead. You can
speak with the dead. Who otherwise are cast out into everlasting
silence,” he had replied.
Predictably, however, Coetzee’s
truck - like everything else in his
life - had broken down halfway
through the journey, forcing the
two to spend the night inside its
cabin. As a means of whiling away
the hours, she had suggested they
tell each other stories.
Coetzee had responded thus:
“Given the existence of a personal
G-d, with a white beard,
quaquaquaqua, outside time without extension who from the heights
of divine apathia loves us deeply
quaquaquaqua with some exceptions.”
He had, moreover, a propensity
for petty spite (as recorded in one of
Coetzee’s own diary entries, in
which he recalls deliberately
scratching one of his father’s
favourite records), and an emotional autism so impenetrable that even
the most fundamental acts of compassion were beyond him.
When the father whose home he
shared developed cancer, underwent a tracheotomy and finally
returned home with the gaping
wound in his throat requiring regular changes of dressing, Coetzee
had panicked at the prospect of
physically caring for him: vigilance
and compassion were wholly alien
to his make-up.
Hating himself, and identifying
strongly with his equally dysfunctional father, Coetzee had turned
and bolted.
What JM Coetzee’s intention is in
requiring readers to jump through
hoops, and extrapolate his own
story from the many layers of fiction in which Summertime is
shrouded, is debatable. As in all his
novels, allegory and imagery are
All about Nazi symbolism in
contemporary clothing design
RENATO PALMI
SINCE HITLER’S appropriation of
the “hakenkreuz” or hooked cross
symbol from cultural sources more
than 3 000 years old, the swastika has
become an indelibly disturbing icon.
Why then, have some contemporary
fashion designers taken this warped
concept of “creativity” and sought to
propagate symbols associated with
the Holocaust by embedding them in
their designs?
Is it for shock value to generate
media coverage, or to exploit the
most heinous form of inhumanity in
living memory, and in so doing, denigrating the Holocaust’s memory?
Few consumers are aware of the
relationship of global apparel brands
and iconic designers with the Nazi
party. The international brand Hugo
Boss made the clothing for Hitler’s
elite death squads, the Schutzstaffel.
French designer Coco Chanel is
reputed to have been a Nazi sympathiser, Louis Vuitton had links with
the German occupation forces in
France, and Prada’s founder Mario
Prada was fascinated by Hitler.
Christian Dior and Jacques Fath
managed their survival of the occupation by dressing the wives of Nazi
officers and French collaborators.
The brothers Adolf and Rudolf
Dassler, who founded the global
sports brands Adidas and Puma,
were members of the Nazi party.
Fashion has always been a conduit
for political and economic agendas.
Does Nazi-affiliated fashion trivialise
the memory and meaning of these
symbols, or does it provoke a morbid
awakening in the consumer?
Italian
designer
Francesco
Barbaro used models dressed in military-style garments adorned with
swastikas. His response to critics was
that he wanted to attract attention to
the “pretentious side of the fashion
Atlas
Shrugs
(Nazi
dress).
world, and the fashion victim who is
even willing to wear a tragic symbol
like the swastika just to keep up with
the latest fashion”.
This renders the fashion industry a
playground of contradictions. The
enthralment with Nazi chic highlights the irony that non-Aryan hands
made these designs in a bizarre popularisation of the Nazi dress code.
Jewish craftsmanship was considered despicable by Nazi Germany, yet
Jewish seamstresses in concentration
camps were forced to reconstruct new
outfits from clothing taken from
Jewish prisoners headed for the gas
chambers.
They had to make lingerie and
evening gowns for the SS guards’
wives and girlfriends. Women prisoners in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck
were forced to make Wehrmacht uniforms, SS uniforms and fur coats for
the Waffen-SS.
Belgian Designer Raf Simon’s
Autumn/Winter 2007/2008 collection
was labelled “Nazi couture”.
British fashion icon McQueen created a new line called McQ for Gucci
that was adorned with Nazi eagles
and the Iron Cross. In July this year, a
Romanian mayor of the town
Constanta and his 15-year-old son
attended a fashion show dressed in
Wehrmacht uniforms.
Why is fashion fascinated with
these symbols? Is it the erotic appeal
of the Nazi uniform silhouette and
the dead glint of black leather, accessorised as lethal glamour?
Designers like the UK’s Vivienne
Westwood argue that the appropriation of such symbols is intended to
subvert and erase their negative
power.
German “street-casual sportswear” brand Thor Steinar co-opts
far-right emblems, including SSrelated runic insignia and the eagle
as a Germanic symbol of pride, to
exploit the youth market’s penchant
for brazen anti-liberal fashion.
Obvious Nazi symbols are banned
in Germany; Thor Steinar relies on
fitted styles coded with numeric signifiers of “Heil Hitler” and “Adolf
Hitler”, or cryptic attributive slogans surrounded by blood-spatters.
It is facile to say we should accept
that fashion is a rightful individual
and collective social expression, no
matter what it propagates. When
peddlers of abhorrent images dismiss these designs as frivolous artistic fun - “just a fashion label” - that
should not be taken seriously, are
they not debasing the very notion of
freedom and human rights?
Whether the vision is to develop
apparel trends advocating ideological beliefs or to grab attention, fashion is a powerful medium in a continual state of flux, with emotive and
contradictory attachments.
Wearing something that represents or supports a belief system
raises its profile more potently
because it is a highly mobile and
provocative assertion of belonging.
Renato Palmi is a fashion and
apparel researcher, author and development specialist. He runs The
ReDress Consultancy-South Africa.
repeatedly fragmented, positing
numerous themes and offering
tantalising glimpses of avenues
that lead back into themselves.
His depiction of “John Coetzee”, the malcontent, white Afrikaner male, could represent the
failed Calvinist ideal. Possibly,
too, “John Coetzee’s” inaccessibility to his would-be researched
is a reminder that biography is
less important than art; that the
writer’s only real life exists in his
literature.
“It would be very, very naïve to
conclude that because [a] theme
was present in his writing, it had
to be present in his life,” Martin
warns Vincent. By extension,
then, perhaps assumptions about
the actual - equally elusive - JM
Coetzee should not be made on
the basis of this book.
Ultimately, should we care?
Probably. But playing sleuth to
JM Coetzee’s hard-to-get is not to
everyone’s taste, or tolerance. His
writing, as always, is superbly
nuanced, subtly suggestive and
graceful.
Yet there is something repugnant - even faintly malevolent about this overly cryptic, bleak,
pitiless novel. Its Biblical allusions, its contrivances and cynicism, its relentless punishment of
South Africans and its grim selfabsorption leave one somewhat
too exhausted to appreciate its
truths, however noble they may
be.
14
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
LETTERS
The Editor, Suite 175, Postnet X10039, Randburg, 2125 email: [email protected]
Disclaimer
Guidelines for letters
The letters page is intended to provide opportunity for a range of views on any given topic to be
expressed. Opinions articulated in the letters are those of the writers and do not necessarily
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Letters up to 400 words will get preference. Please provide your full first name and surname, place of
residence, and a daytime contact telephone or cell number. We do not publish letters under noms de
plume. Letters should preferably be e-mailed. Letters may be edited or shortened.
GOLDSTONE WAS AT PAINS TO PRODUCE A BALANCED REPORT
WHY IS GOLDSTONE QUIET ABOUT THE ABUSE OF WOMEN WORLDWIDE?
MR JUSTICE Richard Goldstone deserves
a thank you for the two actions taken by
him listed below:
1. Accepting the appointment to lead the
Human Rights Council investigation (into
Operation Cast Lead) that had the following mandate: “To investigate all violations
of international human rights law and
international humanitarian law that might
have been committed at any time in the
context of the military operations that
were conducted in Gaza during the period
from December 27 2008 and January 18
2009, whether before, during or after.”
2. Producing a very well-balanced
report, this included reference to human
rights violations to Israeli citizens in Israel
by Hamas.
The people attacking Mr Justice
Goldstone should bear in mind that the
Human Rights Council was established on
MUCH HAS been and probably will continue to be written about the Goldstone
Report. However, there are some distinctions that Goldstone and others who defend
this report, should consider.
Let’s first consider the very body that
mandated Goldstone to undertake his investigations. The UN And UNHRC have an
undeniable record of bias against Israel.
The UN only this week debated rape and
other forms of sexual violence against
women, but according to the report the UN
has not labelled this atrocity a war crime!
Yet, according to Goldstone, self-defence is
such a crime.
The figures touted by this body are horrific in their magnitude: 500 000 women
raped in the genocide of Rwanda; the same
figure in Darfur; 300 000 in the DRC.
We witness almost daily footage of the
vilest forms of abuse of human rights
where limbs are chopped off women and
children, but we hardly hear a murmur
from the UN or Goldstone as “the” custodian of justice.
For someone of Goldstone’s reputation
and standing, to undertake such a mission
and yet ignore human rights abuses of a
magnitude far greater than anything that
either of the parties involved in the Gaza
conflict could even imagine, must speak
volumes about the man. Even Mary
Robinson (no friend of Israel) declined to sit
on this commission.
War by its very nature is violent, brutal
and in practice has no rules or laws. What
country has ever obeyed the rules of war?
Does the US, and their allies live up to the
March 15 2006 with the main purpose of
addressing situations of human rights violations and is not tainted with the antiJewish history of UNRWA and other bodies in the United Nations organisation.
Thus, Israelis and Jews who do think
that civilians should be protected during
military actions, should consider supporting and being active in the activities of the
UN Human Rights Council.
The so-called Gaza Report is 575 pages
long and is available on the United Nations
website for all to read. The reports reveals
the length Justice Goldstone went to in
order to produce a sound analysis of what
happened, in spite of the negativity of the
Israeli Government and propaganda plus
lies presented by Hamas.
Louis Mielke
Glenhazel, Johannesburg
GOLDSTONE REPORT: BOTH SIDES HAVE TO CARRY BLAME
THE RECENT report released by the
Goldstone Commission, charged with
investigating allegations of war crimes
committed during Operation Cast Lead in
Gaza earlier this year, has given rise to a
plethora of praise and criticism from all
corners of the South African Jewish community, as the many letters published in
the SAJR (October 2) show.
Most of these letters point to the alleged
bias of the report; many claim that the conclusions of the Commission were reached
before the actual investigation took place.
This may well be true; the UN Human
Rights Council does indeed have a history
of relatively one-sided criticism of Israel
and its actions.
But there is a degree of hypocrisy in the
outcry by Israel and its supporters: weeks
before the Commission released its findings, Israel had decided that the report
would be biased, and that the Jewish State
would not recognise it.
Israel and its crowds of followers were
just as determined to make the
Commission a failure, as the Commission
was to find them guilty. Because of this,
the dirt that the Jewish community
kicked up about the report is no less disappointing than the report itself.
Whether or not the findings of the
Commission were true, or whether or not
an impartial Commission would have
resulted in the same conclusions, is a different matter completely.
This issue exposes a pressing flaw in
South African Jewry’s defence of Israel.
We approach ideas, claims and actions
from a biased standpoint, a vehemently
pro-Israel standpoint, before the facts of
the matter are apparent.
Because of this, any defence of Israel is
viewed as null and void by society;
because we are so very extreme and unrelenting in our support for Israel, and
indeed in our hatred of anything vaguely
critical of the State, our opinions are not
held in any regard by anyone of a neutral
mindset. It is because of this flaw that we
find ourselves powerless and angry whenever trouble rears its head.
Teva Dosenberg
Midrand
BLINKERED VIEWS OF ‘OPEN SHUHADA STREET’ DAMAGE IMAGE OF JEWS
ON THURSDAY October 1, a group called
“Open Shuhada Street” hosted an event at
Wits University entitled “Shminstim at
Wits”. This event involved bringing
Israelis who refuse to go the Israeli army,
based on a perception that the occupation
amounts to a heinous crime, to Wits
University.
This event was co-hosted by the PSC
(Palestinian Solidarity Committee), with
PSC members chairing the event, and
generally assisting the organisation of
the event.
The PSC advocates a one-state solution,
which ignores the fundamental realities
that exist: Arab states have among the
worst human rights records in the world
and the territories governed by the
Palestinian Authority are no exception.
It is naïve to suggest that Jews would be
entitled to even the most basic human
rights in a Palestinian state. This is especially true when contextualising the conflict in light of events such as the 1920 and
1921 Jerusalem riots, the 1929 Hebron
massacre, where 67 Jews were massacred
by their Arab neighbours, and the 1936 1939 Arab Riots.
Indeed, how can we expect the PA to
afford Jews rights when they blatantly
disregard the rights of their own constituency, as the Hamas-Fatah conflict
demonstrates?
Furthermore,
according
to
the
Jerusalem Media & Communications
Centre, a majority of both Jews and
Palestinians prefer a two-state solution.
The PSC also has a long history of antiSemitism, hosting events such as Bongani
Masuku, who called on South Africans to
make Zionists life a “hell”. The PSC also
hosted an event which encouraged students to write messages dealing with the
1948 War or the “nakba” (catastrophe) as
they referred to it, on a prominent wall at
Wits.
This resulted in a swastika appearing
on the wall and members of the PSC
protested its removal. They have also
performed the play “Seven Jewish
Children”, which stereotypes the
“Jewish” education system.
By hosting an event with this group,
Open Shuhada Street implicitly condones their views. These views are in my
opinion very extreme and should not be
condoned by any reasonable individual.
By hosting an event with the PSC,
Shuhada Street, which was represented
by Jews, lent legitimacy to the event;
indeed without their assistance the
event would not have been possible.
It is my opinion that this was an
extremely harmful event which gave credence to the belief that State of Israel is
an apartheid regime and that we, as proIsrael Jews, are supporters of apartheid.
This is an extremely serious claim in
light of South Africa’s past. It seems that
the members of this organisation (Open
Shuhada Street) are so blinkered that
they refuse to even investigate the possible justification for anti-terror measures.
As the Jewish community, I believe we
cannot tolerate an organisation that
through ignorance, about the essential
facts of the conflict, portrays the South
African Jewish community, a majority
of which are pro-Israel, as propping up
an apartheid regime.
The event had an extremely negative
impact on the views of South African
students towards Israel and anyone who
supports what they now deem to be an
apartheid state.
Rafael Eliasov
Orchards, Johannesburg
(Wits student and Camera Fellow,
Centre for Accuracy in Middle
Eastern Reporting)
letter of war laws even today? Do Hamas,
Hezbolla or Al Qaida respect any law, let
alone human life?
(Some short time back a student at
Hebrew University submitted a doctoral
thesis on the conduct of the IDF in war. She
emphasised the fact that no Israeli soldier
had ever been accused of the rape of an
Arab woman. This comment instigated
accusations that Israeli soldiers were
racists for not raping Arab women!)
Goldstone is critical of both parties’ ability to conduct their own investigations, but
let the record speak for itself and examine
the conduct of the Israeli Supreme Court
and he should well know that this court
stands head and shoulders above most
institutions of its kind in the civilised
world.
Israel’s human rights record has set the
bar extremely high and the country’s
response to natural disasters as well as
man made - earthquakes in Greece, Turkey,
the tsunami in the Pacific, war in Kosovo
and others, speak for themselves
Where permitted, Israel is among the
first to respond with humanitarian aid of
the highest quality. One can expound at
length about Israel’s disproportionate contribution in this field.
Let’s not mention that country’s contribution to humanity in the field of medicine,
science etc. But Goldstone has other
thoughts!
Allan Wolman
Norwood
Johannesburg
TAKE A LESSON FROM THE SHMINISTIM
OVER THE past two weeks, the three leading
representatives of the Shministim movement have been engaging in discussions in
the Johannesburg and Cape Town areas.
These are conscientious objectors from
Israel who have committed themselves to
fight against army conscription in that country.
They themselves refused to join the army
and faced months in jail. They substantiate
their decision to do so because they believe
that the army is a government tool used to
occupy the territories unfairly. They refuse
to be a part of the occupation and they feel
that joining the army is doing so.
Instead, they dedicate time to learn about
the other side. They speak to and engage
with Palestinians; they visit the occupation
zones and have seen atrocities caused by
both sides.
I recently attended one of their discussions
held at the Jabula Centre in Johannesburg
and I was shocked (about what happened
there).
After having met them the night before, I
had already formulated an opinion on their
activism and its worth and/or validity.
Although I disagree with their refusal to join
the Israeli army, I went to the discussion
with an open mind (hoping that others would
do the same) in order to give them a chance
to explain their side.
I was interested in hearing their views
because I have been predominantly exposed
to a one-sided view of the Israeli conflict
regarding its occupation, because I grew up
in an Israeli home in which I was exposed
predominantly to one side of the conflict.
In addition, I attend King David
(Linksfield) High School. A school is a place
in which one should be encouraged to learn
about academia as well as the world. But how
can I formulate opinions about matters in the
world when I only hear one side?
The school refused the Shministim permission to present their argument to us. How
dangerous is that!
The danger is evident when people formulate uninformed opinions due to the fact that
they have only been exposed to one side. I
realised this at the Jabula discussion.
We struggled to hear one another on a
very basic level. We could not even engage in
a constructive discussion. The reason I was
shocked during the discussion is because
people started attacking the Shministim on a
personal level.
They had no interest in what these
Shministim had to say. They had no interest
in listening to their journey and experiences. They had no interest in hearing about
their experience in jail or the atrocities they
have witnessed at the tender age of 20.
It is almost as if those being opposed to
them, came to the discussion with the sole
intention of attacking the Shministim.
I find that we have one idea drilled into our
heads and the thought of an opposing idea
being valid is simply an impossibility.
I was unaware of how far away from peace
we are. Never mind the conflict in Israel, we
have our own conflict here, in South Africa:
and lack of respect for one another. This is
the first challenge.
The Shministim came here with many
goals: to learn but also to teach. They taught
me the true meaning of the concept of listening to both sides before reaching conclusions.
They also taught me about the conflict.
Things are occurring in this conflict that
would shock every single human being with
a conscience. Yet they occur on a daily basis.
The Shministim believe that all we need to
do to begin preventing these atrocities and
paving the way forward is to listen to the
other side. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently it is - we cannot even listen to
each other in a small room in the Jabula
Centre in Sandringham!
It must be reminded that I disagree with
many aspects of the Shministim’s struggle.
However, I agree with others. This allows me
to formulate a more informed opinion. This
is what constructive discussion is about.
Daniel Shalem
Grade 12, Johannesburg
LOOKING FOR...
LESLEY MILLMAN IS LOOKING FOR SA RELATIVES
LESLEY MILLMAN (nee Ackenson) who
lives in the UK, is trying to trace any family
she may have in South Africa.
She says she knows her aunt, Rose Baum,
settled in Johannesburg. Her children are
Hershal, Gerald and Janet.
Millman can be contacted at e-mail:
[email protected]
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
LETTERS
GOLDSTONE’S PAST PRONOUNCEMENTS SPEAK
FOR THEMSELVES
WHEN IT was reported some
months ago that retired Justice
Richard Goldstone had accepted the appointment as chairman of the UN fact-finding
Gaza Commission, I told friends
who thought that that fact
would be beneficial for Israel,
that it was a disaster for Israel.
I reminded them that way
back in 2002, as I wrote at that
time in your paper, we should
distance ourselves from the
likes of Mr Justice Goldstone
who had publicly in an interview with the BBC (as reported
on the front page of the Cape
Argus) condemned Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as
a war criminal.
Mr Justice Goldstone had,
without Sharon having been
tried by a court of law, found
Sharon guilty as a war criminal. Goldstone showed extreme
bias against Sharon as well as
Israel at that time.
Your readers will remember
that Goldstone was the only
Jewish SC who accepted the
appointment as a judge under
the Nationalist Government at
the time.
The trouble with Goldstone is
that he had never been a soldier, nor had he taken part in
the most terrible war of all
times.
Never have I read or heard
any criticism from Goldstone
of the genocide in Darfur, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Burma, Tibet,
Chechnya, etc.
Goldstone has left South
Africa with his family and now
resides comfortably and safely
in the US.
Leading Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, said of
Goldstone (as stated in your
editorial of September 25) that
Goldstone’s name “will be
linked in infamy with such distorters of history and truth as
Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Jimmy Carter”,
Goldstone has forgotten that
Hamas had declared war on
Israel and all its inhabitants
and had caused thousands of
Israeli lives to be lost or forever mutilated.
David Kessler
Cape Town
The letter has been slightly
shortened - Editor
KOSHER FOOD MORE THAN JUST ‘A LITTLE EXTRA’
I HAVE just read a very interesting review of the recent parsha
of the week by Rabbi Dani Brett.
However, there was one sentence that caught my eye where
he wrote inter alia that the
kosher products “cost a little
extra”. Could the good rabbi
please inform us where he shops
for his kosher products at a
“little extra”?
I, as I am sure many of your
readers including your correspondent Stan Klompas, would
love to know where it is.
Meyer Slonim
Johannesburg
15
The Editor, Suite 175, Postnet X10039, Randburg, 2125 email: [email protected]
GOLDSTONE - A REPORT HALF-BAKED AND A DISSERVICE TO ALL
IN ORDER to properly evaluate the
validity of the Goldstone Report, it is
imperative that we first remove the
Jew
from
the
boardroom.
Undoubtedly, his presence renders
objectivity impossible. Therefore, for
the purposes of this exercise let us
consider the “Jones Report”.
Whether Jones (or anyone else)
should have accepted this poisoned
chalice in the first place is debatable
in itself, as the wording of the original
mandate from the HRC made it clear
that what was expected from the
report would be of political consequence rather than a reflection of
complex international norms governing the conduct of war. Were that not
the case, the following would not have
been permitted:
• The premise of the mandate would
not have referred to Israel’s assumed
guilt as the springboard for further
investigation.
• The glaring unsuitability of three
members of the commission, in particular Professor Christine Chinkin
whose earlier condemnation of Israel
as guilty was too strong to ignore.
• The fact that Jones had to
approach the HRC to alter the mandate to include Hamas in the enquiry,
emphasised that this was no mere
oversight but undesired by the
Commission at the time of conception
and therefore reluctantly agreed to.
Having secured this verbal extension of the mandate (the initial resolution remained unaltered), Jones
should have realised that the onus
was on him to ensure that, as flawed
as the brief was, no stone would
remain unturned in reaching a conclusion that would reflect, if not the
entire truth, at least some semblance
of the realities of what occurred in
Gaza.
What has maddened his critics is an
overriding assumption that Israel
deliberately set out to target
Palestinian. This, needless to say is a
red rag to a bull that prides itself in
remaining as moral as possible, while
trying to fight a faceless enemy that
morphs within the civilian population.
That alone punches a huge hole in
the accepted rules of war which were
written with armies in mind that
remained identifiable by their uniforms and other insignia and which
refrained from placing civilians in
harm’s way.
With this in mind, Jones should
have paid far more heed to the manner
in which a terrorist organisation like
Hamas conducted itself in war. An
examination of the Hamas Charter
alone would have revealed that the
international rules of war had bearing
on one side only, Israel, while Hamas
regarded itself as unconstrained by
such trifles. That being the case, the
IDF’s actions should have been viewed
in an entirely new light.
Reading the daily word-by-word
transcripts of the hearings, it becomes
obvious that Palestinian witnesses
were handled with kid-gloves, rarely
challenged and had their testimonies
accepted by-and-large with unrestrained sympathy.
Little effort appears to have been
made to verify any of these by further
investigation. With Israel remaining
aloof from this investigation, great
store was placed on evidence provided
by NGOs and human rights organisations such as B’Tselem and Human
Rights Watch, both known to be overtly critical of the IDF but seldom of
Hamas or Fatah.
While acknowledging that, with the
benefit of hindsight it might have been
to Israel’s benefit to take part in this
tainted investigation, she can be forgiven her cynicism in view of the bias
displayed
by
both
the
UN
Commission and the wording of the
mandate.
Even with Jones at the helm, the
chances of a fair hearing appeared
remote and, if anything, this has
proved to be the case.
One overriding flaw appears to
have been overlooked; the vastly different perspectives of a team of nonmilitary jurists who regard themselves as experts on how war should
be fought based on international
rules but who, quite obviously have
never fired a shot in anger, against
military experts who can legitimately
be regarded as having a far greater
insight into the realities of warfare
simply because “they have been there
and done that”.
I refer to Colonel Richard Kemp
and Major General Jim Molan who
served as chief of operations of the
Iraq multinational force in 2004 - 05.
Both men have openly stated that
this is a different kind of war where
the behaviour of a terrorist adversary
makes decisions taken in the heat of
battle a great deal more complex.
Both have experienced this themselves and both should have been
approached to give expert guidance
before the “Jones Commission” came
to its final glib conclusions.
Sadly Jones inherited a unique
opportunity but failed to rise to the
occasion. In trying to deflect the
blame on to Israel’s failure to co-operate with the investigation he ignores
the many deficiencies in the report
that have little to do with Israel’s lack
of participation.
In its present form, the “Jones
Report” remains half-baked and a disservice to all concerned.
Victor Gordon
Pretoria
16
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
LETTERS
NETANYAHU’S ‘STATESMAN-LIKE’ UN SPEECH LAUDED
FOLLOWING BENJAMIN Netanyahu’s dramatic and
inspiring address at the United Nations - which resonated with some of history’s more memorable
speeches at that international venue - it is becoming
ever more clear that the viewpoint propagated by
Nobel laureate Professor Yisrael Aumann at Limmud
recently has the distinct ring of truth.
A member of the Centre for the Study of Rationality
at the HUJ, Prof Aumann said: “The problem is that
the Arabs have not yet got used to the fact that we are
here to stay... if you are constantly thinking about
peace now, you are actually working in the opposite
direction.”
The professor, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for
his work in Game Theory, believes that “simplistic
peace-making can cause war - while an arms race,
credible war threats and mutually assured destruction can reliably prevent war.”
It is conventional wisdom that precisely that situation during the Cold War era prevented the outbreak
of the Third World War.
He submits that unilateral withdrawals from land
(such as the withdrawal from Gaza) send a signal of
weakness to the other side. “It says to the enemy: you
blow yourselves up, you kill many Israelis and you kill
yourselves - and as a result of that, we are withdrawing. So just keep up the pressure and we’ll keep withdrawing more and more.”
Prof Aumann added: “You don’t need to know a lot
of Game Theory to understand that that is simply stupid and counter-productive. In that way we are actually fostering war. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prizewinner to understand this - it is very very clear.”
Game Theory indicated that “an interaction with a
long horizon is more liable to bring about co-operative
solutions.”
Prof Aumann concludes: “We have to sit tight.”
Interestingly, that approach is similar to the one
adopted by Professor Hussein Solomon of the
University of Pretoria and director of the Centre for
International Political Studies, during the “Hamas
week” campaign by SAUJS on the Wits campus
recently,
Prof. Solomon noted: “It appears that at the
moment, the only way forward for Hamas is that of
moderation as it’s the only way for it to produce
results. Therefore Israel should probably adopt a
gradual response to Hamas as trust can only develop
slowly between the two groups.”
That also seems to coincide with Benjamin
Netanyahu’s approach, with its emphasis on economic co-operation to build up trust over a period which
ultimately will lead to a situation (in Netanyahu’s
words at the UN) of “a genuine peace, a defensible
peace, a permanent peace”.
David Abel
George
AROUND THE WORLD
NEWS IN BRIEF
FIRED PALESTINIAN INSTRUCTOR SUES CHICAGO COLLEGE
CHICAGO - A Palestinian Muslim instructor fired from a Chicago
college, is suing for discrimination.
Suriya Smiley sued Columbia College Chicago last Monday in federal court after she was fired in January when a student accused
her of making anti-Semitic remarks in class.
Smiley was accused of saying "I should have known you were
Jewish by the size of your nose" during roll call, according to the
suit. The suit also states that the college did not investigate the student's claims before firing Smiley.
"The unsubstantiated allegation against, and subsequent firing
of, Sue Smiley reeks of racism," said Kevin Vodak, an attorney for
the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
according to the Chicago Tribune.
Smiley, who was employed as a part-time faculty member in the
Radio Department for 14 years, has filed a suit through the council
claiming one count of national origin discrimination and two
counts of race discrimination. It seeks wages and benefits Smiley
would have received as a Columbia employee, as well as compensatory and punitive damages.
The suit also looks to reinstate Smiley with her position or
receive pay in lieu of reinstatement.
Columbia spokeswoman Elizabeth Burke-Dain told the Tribune
that the college did not comment on personnel matters. Columbia,
an arts and media college on the South Loop, has 12 500 students.
(JTA)
BRITISH PAPER CLAIMS AHMADINEJAD BORN JEWISH
BETH DIN REASSURES ON KOSHER PRICES
7. The commission that I referred to was never
constituted.
I am of the opinion that the UOS, as represented
by Sevitz:
• Is transparent and eager to engage in this matter
• Upholds sound corporate governance from an
accounting and financial disclosure point of view
• Produces timeous annual financial statements,
audited by a registered firm of auditors in accordance with generally accepted accounting practice
and international financial reporting standards.
Sevitz handed me the audited annual financial
statements of the UOS, for the 2008 financial year,
upon which I have based my opinions mentioned
above.
I once again call upon the owners and executive
management of the kosher abattoirs, butcheries
and national retail chains to publically respond to
my letter of September 11.
I HAVE spoken to Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein
and have had a meeting with Darren Sevitz, the chief
executive officer of the Union of Orthodox
Synagogues (UOS). Both have acknowledged my letter of September 11, published in the Jewish Report.
Rabbi Goldstein told me that he had a few objectives in mind regarding the high cost of kosher meat
and poultry.
Sevitz explained the following operating matters
of the UOS to me.
1. The make up and quantum of the gross annual
revenues and expenditures.
2. The income received by the UOS is budgeted,
spent and accounted for.
3. The operating profit achieved is negligible compared to the income and expenditure flows.
4. How the UOS charges its kosher fees to the
Jewish players in the kosher meat supply chain.
5. The instances where the UOS pay the shochtim
and mashghigim salaries and where the kosher
establishments pay from their operations.
6. The annual trend from 2001 to 2008 of the number of oxen and chickens slaughtered.
Stanley Klompas
Johannesburg
KOSHER FOOD MORE THAN JUST ‘A LITTLE EXTRA’
I HAVE just read a very interesting review
of the recent parsha of the week by Rabbi Dani
Brett.
However, there was one sentence that caught my
eye where he wrote inter alia that the kosher products “cost a little extra”. Could the good rabbi please
inform us where he shops for his kosher products at
a “little extra”?
I, as I am sure many of your readers including
your correspondent Stan Klompas, would love to
know where it is.
Meyer Slonim
Johannesburg
BARBARIC KAPPAROT BELONGS IN DUSTBIN OF HISTORY
Causing pain, suffering, anguish and terror (as
kapparot does) to a living sentient being, is totally
contrary to what enlightened Jewish sources stipulate as acceptable conduct.
RITA LEWIS in her Yom Kippur- related article
of
September 25, suggests that readers
consult their rabbis for more information about
kapparot.
Can we hope that the rabbis will tell them to consign this barbaric, mediaeval practice to the dustbin of history where it belongs?
Anthony Pamm
Camps Bay, Cape Town
KOSHER PRICES: COMPARE IT WITH OVERSEAS COUNTRIES
IN REPLY to Stan Klompas (complaining of the
high costs of kosher products) , I agree that prices
for kosher meats/poultry are meshugah... but... is it
only the owners that are benefiting?
Or is the cost involved in the kosher structure,
worldwide high? When one looks at comparative
costs from other countries, I reckon we could be in
line.
I was lucky to get a few Yiddishe Newspapers
from London, during Yomtov and one of the cheapest (oy vey) advertised prices for kosher meat was
lamb chops £15kg, chicken schnitzels £10kg,
pickled brisket £12kg and fresh chickens £3,20 kg,
steak mince £5kg. Times 12 to convert to rands, and
our local prices look quite reasonable all of a sudden.
London has at least double the Yiddishe population of the total ‘Beloved Country’. Makes one
think.
Stan Smookler
Johannesburg
PROVING AGAIN THAT THE LAW IS AN ASS
IN AN article putatively defending his opinion,
published in the Jerusalem Post of September 21,
under the banner “Who’s being unfair?”, our eminent jurist (Mr Justice Richard) Goldstone, proclaims the following inanities:
“Enquiries relating to a severe... military operation... were far more complex than the comparatively unsophisticated launch of thousands of
rockets into Israel as acts of terror.”
Does our eminent jurist know how many Israelis
were killed/injured by those “unsophisticated”
rockets?
He follows with: “Israel has not explained why
the bombing... was timed for the busiest time on a
week day...”
Of course, the eminent jurist forgot to mention
that Hamas, “not all members of which are combatants”, in his considered opinion always timed
their rocket barrages with great consideration and
care for the Israeli victims of their terrorist
attacks!
As Dickens said: “The law is an ass!”
Joel Wolpert
Benmore
Sandton
LONDON - The author of a book on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is
refuting a British newspaper report that the Iranian president was
born to a Jewish family that converted to Islam.
The Daily Telegraph based its report last Saturday on
Ahmadinejad's original family name of Sabourjian, which according to the article is a common Iranian Jewish name, especially
among those from Aradan, where the Iranian president was born.
The paper claimed that the family converted to Islam when
Ahmadinejad was four years old and published a picture of the
Iranian leader holding up his identity card during last year's election campaign in a way that shows his family's previous name.
But in a blog on the Guardian website, Meir Javedanfar, coauthor of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
and the State of Iran, wrote on Monday that rumors that
Ahmadinejad's family converted to Islam from Judaism, were false.
Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst, said
Ahmadinejad's father was a religious Shia Muslim who taught the
Qur'an before and after the Iranian president's birth and their move
to Tehran.
The newspaper reported that Sabourjian means cloth weaver, or
specifically tallit weaver. It adds that the word "sabour" means tallit, and the suffix "jian" indicates that his family was practising
Jews. The Telegraph also reported that the name is included in an
Iranian Home Ministry list of names reserved for Iranian Jews.
Ahmadinejad has never denied that his family changed its name
when it moved to Tehran in the 1950s, but has never stated the family's original name. (JTA)
CANADA SEIZES MATERIALS BELIEVED FOR IRAN NUKES
WASHINGTON - Canadian customs officials have seized materials
that they believe were being illegally shipped to Iran for use in its
nuclear weapons programme.
George Webb, head of the Canada Border Service Agency's
Counter Proliferation Section, said centrifuge parts, programmable
logic controllers and a shipment of microchips that appear to be
some type of guidance system are among the materials that customs officials intercepted, according to an article in the National
Post.
Webb also said that Canada recently identified a new port in the
Persian Gulf, Ras al-Khaimah, that is being used to ship goods to
Iran. The port technically is in the United Arab Emirates but is controlled by Iran. Webb said Canadian customs officers were looking
for goods destined for the port.
"All of our people in those ports are aware," he said, "so as soon
as they see it, it's hauled aside for examination and follow up." (JTA)
ZOA SEEKS PROBE OF STUDENTS FOR HAMAS FUNDRAISING
NEW YORK - A Jewish group has called on federal authorities to
probe University of California, Irvine students for allegedly raising
funds for Hamas.
In a letter dated October 2, the Zionist Organisation of America,
urged the US Department of Justice to investigate the students over
suspicions that they collected money for the Palestinian terrorist
group.
According to ZOA, members of the Muslim Union of Students
solicited money for a charity called Viva Palestina at a rally held
May 21 dubbed "Israel: The Politics of Genocide".
The charity, founded by British leftist politician George Galloway,
who headed the rally on the Irvine campus, has been accused of
directly aiding Hamas.
"We are concerned that the funds raised at UC Irvine may have
been for the purpose of providing material support and resources
to Hamas, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation, in violation of the law," wrote Morton Klein and Susan Tuchman, the
ZOA president and director of its Centre for Law and Justice,
respectively.
In addition, ZOA said activists had violated university policy by
collecting money without receiving university approval.
Last week, a university official responded to ZOA concerns by
saying the university would launch an internal probe into the incident. (JTA)
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
COMMUNITY COLUMNS
ABOVE BOARD
Zev Krengel,
National Chairman
A column of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies
Limmud at Wits campus: Board
is getting its submission ready
THE MOST significant matter
addressed by the Board this week
was the preparation for and deliverance of an oral submission
before Advocate Geoff Budlender
regarding the investigation he is
heading over what took place on
Wits campus during the Limmud
seminar.
As reported on in previous
columns, anti-Israel elements both
on and off campus made strenuous
efforts to prevent IDF Lt-Col David
Benjamin from speaking at
Limmud. Having been unsuccessful in this regard, they then resorted to playing the “racial profiling”
card so as to discredit Limmud and
those responsible for ensuring
security on the day.
In both her written and oral submission, our national director,
Wendy Kahn, forthrightly refuted
these scurrilous charges. She further detailed the offensive and
intimidatory behaviour of many of
the protesters towards Limmud
participants and the fact that certain flagrant breaches of university regulations were committed by
the former, apparently with
impunity.
Apart from being present on the
day to witness these occurrences
first hand, Wendy also worked
closely with the university prior to
the event over how issues relating
to admission and security would be
handled.
The SA Union of Jewish Students has inevitably been caught
up in the whole unpleasant affair,
even though the Limmud seminar
had not been its function. SAUJS,
too, presented written and oral
submissions to Advocate Budlender through those of its members
who had likewise been present.
As is the case all over the world,
Jewish students have found themselves on the frontlines in efforts to
counter moves to demonise and
delegitimise the State of Israel and
to sideline any dissenting voices in
this regard.
Our own Jewish students can be
warmly commended on their
tenacity in sticking to their guns
and taking a stand for what they
believe is right in what is all too
often an unacceptably hostile environment.
It behoves us as a community to
support and encourage them as
much as we can, and indeed it is an
area in which the Board has
become increasingly active in
recent years.
17
Communal bodies spell out
their views on Shministim visit
THE CURRENT visit to South
Africa of the three Israeli
“Shministim” (conscientious objectors), has elicited a great deal of
reaction from within the Jewish
community.
A media release issued by the
joint media committee of the
SAJBD (Cape Council) and the
WPZC and a letter issued by the
National Board in Johannesburg,
give context to the visit and the
views of the representative Jewish
communal bodies.
In a media statement, the SAJBD
says it is “proud of Israel’s robust
and mature democracy, which provides space for dissenting voices,
like the Shministim, to be heard.
“Freedom of information and
freedom of speech in Israel and the
Diaspora is the tradition of Jews
throughout the world. This allows
for the widest array of views to be
presented, acted upon and promoted in the free press and in government.” But the statement makes it
clear that the SAJBD does not agree
with the views of the three
Shministim.
“Although the Shministim represent a tiny minority, Israeli society
makes the space for their point of
view to be expressed.
The statement makes it, however,
abundantly clear that “conscription
in Israel is a matter of law and is
necessitated by a very real existential threat”. And it warns that transgressions are punishable by law.
“Throughout its history Israel
has been faced with enemies from
across its borders committed to its
violent destruction. Those Israelis
who refuse to do military service
are irrationally denying the harsh
realities that their country is
forced to deal with in order to protect its citizens and ensure its longterm survival as a sovereign, independent nation. Breaking the law
of a country has consequences.”
The statement said the Board
was “troubled” by the parallels
drawn by the Shministim between
the End Conscription Campaign
(ECC) and their own campaign.
Before their arrival, David Saks,
associate director of the Board, had
sent out a letter setting out the
views of the three - and also of the
Board.
He writes, inter alia: “Three leading members of Shministim, an
Israeli organisation opposed to military conscription in Israel, will be
in South Africa to participate in the
25th anniversary of the founding of
the ECC. It is clearly intended by
the organisers of the visit that
comparisons be drawn between the
Israeli group and the ECC, that was
active in South Africa during the
apartheid era.
“The comparison between the
ECC and Shministim is, however,
entirely fallacious.”
Saks pointed out that conscription in apartheid South Africa had
been to perpetuate an unjust system of white minority rule against
those striving to create a non-racial
democracy, while conscription in
Israel, by contrast, was necessitated by the reality that throughout
its history, that country had been
faced with enemies across its borders committed to its destruction.
“These threats remain undiminished, particularly as a result of
the activities of such Iranian-supported proxies as Hezbollah in
Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.”
In a later paragraph he writes:
“Those Israelis who refuse to do
military service on the grounds
that this means continuing the
‘oppressive occupation of the
Palestinian people’, are irrationally denying the harsh realities that
their country is forced to deal with
in order to protect its citizens and
ensure its long-term survival as a
sovereign, independent nation.”
The SAJBD Cape Council and
WPZC said in a statement it was
not “in any way” involved in
arranging, sponsoring, supporting, promoting or hosting this delegation.
Two issues involved the Cape
Town Board, namely that the
organisers had asked them to meet
with the delegation. “The Board
agreed to meet in a closed meeting
in order to hear and understand
the nature and purpose of this visit
and to respond accordingly, directly to the Shministim.”
It further stated that although
they had not been directly consulted at the time that the booking(for
a venue to host the three) had been
made, “we are a partner in the
Hatfield Management Campus
management, and as such we are
one of the bodies associated with
the decision to let the IA Hall at the
Albow Centre to members of our
community who booked it at the
normal full hire price... As matters
currently stand, there is no clear
policy in terms of which the HMC
could or would turn down this
request.”
18
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
YOUTH TALK
Alison Goldberg [email protected]
TA Primary learners get
into the spirit of Succot
OWN CORRESPONDENT
PHOTOGRAPH: SUZANNE BELLING
TORAH ACADEMY Primary School learners had a busy week before Succot, making
miniature succahs, decorative craft to hang
in their succahs at home and gifts for their
families.
Pictured are the grade 2 boys showing off
the etrog boxes they made for their fathers.
Adina Swartz, Michal Gershuni and Hannah Swartz, of Torah Academy Primary
School, proudly hold up their very own grade 6 cook book on sale at the Market Day
TA Market Day is
teaching in a fun way
PAM YACHAD
PHOTOGRAPH: SUZANNE BELLING
TORAH ACADEMY Primary School held
a novel Market Day on Thursday,
October 1. Every class was responsible
for either making a craft or buying an
item to sell.
This market day falls under the
umbrella of Economic Management
Science, a subject which has been introduced into schools countrywide. This
subject is crucial in equipping learners
in developing skills, knowledge, values
and attitudes that will enable them to
become economically literate.
Tables were set up in the courtyard of
the school which was transformed into a
bustling market where goods were traded
with great excitement. From raffles, to
decorated pens and pencils, hand-crafted
fridge magnets to the grade 6 cook book,
from beautiful beaded jewellery to gel
candles - and even a girls’ market was the
order of the day.
All the proceeds of the profits made at
the market will go towards buying something special for the school.
KDVP
Primary’s
budding
poets
STACY FLEISHMAN
PHOTOGRAPH: MICHELLE THORNE
RECENTLY DURING assembly at
King David Victory Park Primary
School, Kayla Vardi (left) and Rachel
Edelstein (right) both grade 3 pupils,
read a poem written by themselves
during class. Well done girls!
Gabriella Tobias and Aliza Kramer show off the cheque they raised in honour of the
late Natanel Feigenbaum, the young boy who was so tragically killed in a car accident
recently.
Two Yeshiva girls raise
nearly R17 000 for
Children’s Home
GABRIELLA TOBIAS
PHOTOGRAPHS: JESSICA ABRAMS
GABRIELLA TOBIAS and Aliza Kramer,
two learners at Yeshiva College, wanted to
make a difference to less fortunate children
at Arcadia Children’s Home.
In the memory of Natanel Feigenbaum
z”l, who tragically died in a car accident
recently, they took the initiative to collect
money for clothing for the children of the
home and succeeded in raising R16 888. This
money has gone to the children through the Chevrah
Kadisha.
Pictured
here
are
Gabriella Tobias on the
left and Aliza Kramer.
Gabriella adds that it took
just over a week to raise the
money.
The girls sent out letters
to school-going children at
Yeshiva and stood at a community gathering at Glenhazel Shul, in honour of the
late Natanel.
It’s holiday time, it’s
Peter Rabbit time...
ROBYN SASSEN
PHOTOGRAPH: JACQUI WHITE
THESE SCHOOL holidays, until October
11, at the Civic Theatre complex in
Johannesburg, the People’s Theatre’s
team of performers will have audience
members alternatively enthralled, flab-
bergasted and delighted at the mischief,
naughtiness and lessons articulated by
the gang of Beatrix Potter characters, in
their current production of Peter Rabbit
and Friends.
Pictured is Botha Enslin as the wicked
yet charming Mr Fox, with the gullible
Jemima Puddleduck, played by Sama Yoyo.
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
19
Join in and vote for your favourite bride online
YOU CAN now vote for your favourite
Jewish Bride of the Year online. Each bride
will be designated a code for online voting.
We also print the codes for the bride photographs which have already been printed in
the current competition.
This is the fourth WIZO Aviv Shaffa,
Lechaim.co.za and the SA Jewish Report
Bride of the Year competition. It is open to
all brides married between February 2008
and March 31 2009.
Lechaim.co.za is again a partner in the
competition and will handle the online voting, where members of the community can
vote for their favourite bridal entry.
“Online and SMS voting proved to be
such a successful option during the last
competition that it was only natural that
we partner again with Lechaim.co.za in
addition to the Jewish Report,” a spokesman from WIZO said.
“Each bride has been assigned an SMS
code and we encourage friends, family and
the public to go online and/or SMS their
vote and prizes will be given,” says Elan
Sawitzky, of Lechaim.co.za
Entries for Bride of the Year can be
dropped of at the WIZO Johannesburg
offices, 2nd floor Beyachad and can be
downloaded from Lechaim.co.za
Download your entry forms or vote
for your favourite brides online at
www.Lechaim.co.za
SMS “WIZO” and “Number of Bride” to
34008 to vote via SMS. Unlimited SMS
entries are allowed. SMSes are charged at
R2 each, with all proceeds donated to
WIZO.
Here’s a list of the earlier brides who
didn’t have a “code” at the time:
1) Lee-Ann Bayer SMS Code 02
2) Dena Pantanowitz SMS Code 03
3) Glynnis Paiken SMS Code 04
4) Clare Rosen SMS Code 05
5) Gabi Riesnik SMS Code 06
6) Kerri-Lee Baron SMS Code 01
7) Pamela Krein SMS Code 07
8) Taryn Stavropulos SMS Code 08
9) Kaylee Hurwitz SMS Code 09
10) Jodi Cannon SMS Code 010
11) Lisa Reichman-Israelsohn SMS Code
011
12) Hayley Yudelowitz SMS Code 012
13) Hayley Omsky SMS Code 013
14) Ortal Sharp SMS Code 014
15) Romi Becker SMS Code 015
16) Cherie Machet SMS Code 016
17) Lori Snoyman SMS Code 017
18) Vicki Segal SMS Code 018
19) Claudia Goldberg SMS Code 019
20) Dalya Yael Erster SMS Code 020
ing, at their own expense or they will be
disqualified.
4. The winner must become an active member of WIZO for one year following the
competition.
5. No photographers are permitted to send
in photographs. The only photographs
permitted for entry are those submitted
by the bride herself, or by her photographer with her explicit permission. All
entries MUST be signed by the bride herself.
6. Photographs will be printed within the
time frame and discretion of the Jewish
Report.
7. All photographs submitted will be
judged with the original photograph, so
no digital images are permitted.
8. Brides must specify whether they would
like their photographs returned to them
after the competition. The photographs
will be available from the WIZO office at
Beyachad in Johannesburg after the culminating function.
9. Very importantly: Please note, all photographs MUST be submitted to WIZO and
NOT to the SA Jewish Report.
Send the photos to: Attention: Sandy or
Rolene
WIZO/SAJR Bridal Competition
PO Box 29216
Sandringham
Johannesburg, 2131
or hand-deliver to:
(WIZO at) Beyachad
2 Elray Street, Raedene
Johannesburg, 2192
Please send in your photograph with:
Bride's first and maiden names
Groom's name
Place of chuppah
The rules are as follows:
1. Entries close early in the new year - the
exact date will be announced later. All
brides married from April 1 2008 until
then, are eligible for entry.
2. Bride must be present in Johannesburg
at the time of judging.
3. The top 25 finalists must be in Johannesburg for the final interview judg-
The latest batch of brides with their SMS codes, appears today.
Date of wedding
Name of photographer
Contact telephone number
(bride)
Contact telephone number
(groom)
E-mail address
Postal address
postcode
Cell number
Signature, consenting to the printing of this photograph
Would you like to get your photographs back? YES / NO
Bride 021 SMS
Code 021
Tamar Raff (nee
Lever)
Groom: Meir
Married:
August 11
2009
Chuppah: 13
Mervyn Street
Photographer:
Roy Friedman
Bride 022 SMS Note: No entries will be accepted unless all the fields (name, telephone number, e-mail
Code 022
address etc) are filled in correctly.
Dalya Ketz (nee
Rabinowitz)
Groom:
Michael
Married:
December 10
2008
Chuppah:
Wanderers
Photograhper:
Splendid
Productions
Bride 023 SMS
Code 023
Taryn
Greenberg (nee
Abromowitz)
Groom: Bryant
Married:
March 1 2009
Chuppah:
Waverley Shul
Photographer:
Bruno
Bride 024 SMS
Code 024
Eden Cohen
(nee Schlossberg)
Groom: Warren
Married:
September 25
2008
Chuppah: Pine
Street Shul
Photographer:
Toni Jade
Bride 025 SMS
Code 025
Kerri-Ann
Girnun (nee
Hirschowitz)
Groom: Trevor
Married:
February 17
2008
Chuppah:
Jerusalem
(resident in SA)
Photographer:
Mandelle
Bernstein
Bride 026 SMS
Code 026
Bianca
Rubenstein
(nee Seeff )
Groom: Daniel
Married:
September 20
2009
Chuppah:
Mizrachi Shul
Photographer:
Splendid
Productions
20
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
WHAT’S ON
NOTE: Deadline for all entries is 12:00 on the Friday
prior to publication.
Key to organisations, venues, contact
details and cost:
• Beyachad Resource Centre/Library, 2 Elray St,
Raedene, 2192. Norma Shulman (011) 645-2567. email:[email protected]
• Bikkur Cholim - Jewish Society for Visiting the Sick,
7A Chester Road, Greenside East, Johannesburg. Joy
Gafin (011) 447-6689.
• CAJE - College of Adult Jewish Education, Sydenham
Highlands North Shul (011)640-5021.
• CSO - Emergency phone number 086 18 000 18.
• FFHS - Friendship Forum for Holocaust Survivors,
Second Generation and Members of the Community
Affected by the Holocaust. Presentations held at the
Gerald Horwitz Lounge, Golden Acres, 85 George
Ave, Sandringham
• HOD - Hebrew Order of David International. HOD
Centre Oaklands Road, Orchards. Office (011) 640
3017 - [email protected]
• JAFFA - Jewish Accomodation for Fellow Aged. (012)
346-2007/8.
• KDESF - King David Schools’ Foundation. King David
Alumni [email protected] (011) 480-4723.
• Nechama Bereavement Counselling Centre - Room
A304, 3rd Floor, hospital wing, Sandringham
Gardens, 85 George Avenue, Sandringham, 2192.
Contact (011) 640-1322.
• New Friendship Ladies Group - A group for single
women - contact Lucille (011) 791-5226 or 082-9275786.
• ORT and ORTJET South Africa - 44 Central Street,
Cnr 10th Ave, Houghton. Contact (011) 728-7154.
• Rabbi Cyril Harris Community Centre (RCHCC) and
Great Park Shul, Johannesburg. Contact Hazel, (011)
728-8088 or Rene Sidley (011) 728-8378. Cost usually R50, including refreshments.
• SAIJE - Sandton Adult Institute of Jewish Education,
Sandton Shul (011) 883-4210. E-mail: saije@
sandtonshul.co.za.
• Second Innings, Johannesburg - Jewish Community
Services - Donald Gordon Centre, 85 George Avenue
Sandringham. Their group meets at the Gerald
Horwitz Lounge, Golden Acres, 85 George Avenue
Sandringham every Sunday morning for tea at 10h00
followed by the meeting at 10h30. Contact Grecia
Gabriel (011) 532-9718 for information.
• Society of Israel Philately (SIP) - [email protected].
Contact Maurice (011) 485-2293.
• South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Jhb) Beyachad, 2 Elray Street, Raedene. Contact (011)
645-2500 or (011) 645-2523.
• South African Zionist Federation (SAZF),
Johannesburg - Beyachad, 2 Elray Street, Raedene.
Contact Froma, (011) 645-2505.
• The Israel Centre. Contact Debbie (011) 645-2560.
• The Jewish National Fund (JNF) Choir, Beyachad, 2
Elray St, Raedene. Contact Crystal Kaplan. 083-3765999.
• The Jewish Outlook Team. Contact Ryan Cane, 27
76 215 8600; e-mail [email protected];
website http://www.jewishoutlook.org.za
• The Jewish Women’s Benevolent Society (JWBS) Sandringham Gardens, 85 George Avenue
Sandringham 2192. Contact Carolyn Sabbagh. (011)
485-5232.
• The Simcha Friendship and Cultural Circle (SFCC),
Johannesburg - Sandton Shul. Contact Sylvia Shull,
(011) 783-5600.
• The United Sisterhood, 38 Oxford Road Parktown.
Contact Marian (011) 646-2409. website:
http://www.unitedsisterhood.co.za
• Tiyulim (Jewish Outdoor Club) - Contact Martin 082965-7419 or Greg 082-959-9026
• Union of Jewish Women (UJW), Johannesburg - 1
Oak Street Houghton. Contact (011) 648-1053. Cost
R15 for the Friendship Luncheon Club.
• Union of Jewish Women (UJW), Cape Town - (021)
434-9555, e-mail: [email protected]
• United Zionist Luncheon Club (UZLC), Johannesburg
- Our Parents Home. Contact Gloria, (011) 485-4851
or 072-127-9421.
• UOS- Union of Orthodox Synagogues (011) 4854865. E-mail: [email protected]. Fax 086-610-3442
• WIZO Johannesburg - Beyachad, 2 Elray Street
Raedene. Contact Joyce Chodos (011) 645-2548 or
Sandy Kramer (011) 645-2515.
Tuesday (October 13)
• Second Innings presents Justice Ralph Zulman - “Are
Judges Human?” at Our Parents Home at 14:30.
Contact Siggy Meinstein on 082-443-2711.
• RCHCC - Join us at 19:30 for the launch of Erica
Emdon’s debut novel Jelly Dog Days - A harrowing
novel of childhood abuse and suffering.
Wednesday (October 14)
• SFCC hosts Rabbi Michael Katz of Chabad who will
speak on a subject of topical interest at Sandton Shul
at 10:00.
• RCHCC hosts Rabbi Gidon Fox on “Can We Be Kinder
Than G-d, Creating A Genetically Perfect Society?” the
third lecture in the series “Back To The Future Ancient Tradition As The GPS For A Modern Society”.
Time: 19:30. Cost: R60.
• RCHCC presents the second session of its 14:00
matinee “A Touch Away”, an 8 part Israeli TV miniseries.
Friday (October 16)
• UZLC presents Laura Siegel, on “Yesterday - Today
and Tomorrow - Israel Greening the World”.
• WoW presents former Vodacom CEO Allan KnottCraig at a motivational breakfast at Summer Place,
Hyde Park. Time: 07:30 - 09:00. Book online at
www.womenoftheworld.org.za or call Mandy on
083-380-5268.
South dealer, neither vul
NORTH
3
Q32
AJ107
KQJ32
WEST
AKQJ654
J7654
5
SOUTH
2
AK
KQ96432
AJ7
South
1D
6D
West
4S
All pass
EAST
10987
1098
8
109864
North
5D
East
5S
Opening lead: ??
The bidding:
1D - It's a good hand but even playing strong
twos I prefer the choice made.
4S - Another good decision. This hand is
NOT a two-suiter with such disparity of
length and quality in the majors, and with no
defence it's vital to pre-empt.
5D - Nothing else really appeals.
5S - Hard to know what the effect of this bid
will be, but the spade fit alone makes it worth
it.
(includes refreshments). Book together for this and the
lecture on Sholem Aleichem on November 25 for R50
for both.
Sunday (October 18)
• Second Innings presents virtuoso pianist Tony Bentel
- Solo. (See key).
• RCHCC is holding an art exhibition “Works by Men” Sidney Abramowitch, Sidney Goldblatt, Monty Sack,
Pascual Tarazona, Anton Uys at 18:00.
• RCHCC is hosting “Sounding Out the Image” an
audiovisual presentation by composer Philip Miller
who will discuss his long-time collaboration with the
artist William Kentridge, at 19:30.
• SAZF presents “Are You Smarter Than Your
Bobba and Zaida?” with Mark Banks, Mel Miller, Rita
Lewis, Simon Sieff, Ros Basserabie and others
against a group of sensational grade 4s. Venue:
Yeshiva College campus. Time: 15:00. Tickets: R50.
Contact (011) 645-2510/12; or book online at
www.sazionfed.co.za
Monday (October 19)
• UJW presents Martine Schaffer, MD of the
Homecoming Revolution, on Another View Of South
Africa. Venue: 1 Oak Street, Houghton. Time: 09:30.
Donation: R20.
Wednesday (October 21)
• HOD Big Bingo Bash - Cost: R150 for 7 games and
light supper and refreshments. To book e-mail
[email protected] or 082-857-3107.
• RCHCC is staging the launch of Moeletsi Mbeki’s
book: Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism
Needs Changing, at 19:30.
• Sydenham Shul presents High Shul Musical at the
Victory Theatre. Call (011) 640-5021. Booking at
Computicket.
Monday (October 26)
• UJW presents Professor Rudolph Zinn, School Of
Criminal Justice at Unisa, on “House Robberies; Big
Burglar is Watching You”. Venue: 1 Oak Street,
Houghton. Time: 09:30. Donation: R20.
• Sydenham Shul presents High Shul Musical at the
Victory Theatre. Call (011) 640-5021. Booking at
Computicket.
Tuesday (October 27)
• Mind - Body - Making the most of “ME” with psychologist Claudia Davimes, and Solange Czerniewicsz,
physiotherapist and anti-ageing specialist. Venue:
Beyachad at 09:30. R30 includes tea and refreshments.
Wednesday (October 28)
• ORT JET Networking Forum. For business people to
interact, network and connect with others. From
17:00 to 20:00 at the Hyatt Hotel Rosebank.
Booking by October 15 is essential. For more information contact Michelle on (011) 728-7154 or
[email protected]
• RCHCC Book Launch In A Different Time: The Inside
Story of the Delmas Four by Peter Harris at 19:30.
• RCHCC Thursday matinee - “The Pawnbroker” starring Rod Steiger.
• UJW presents “Divas In Concert 2”. Venue: Sandton
Shul Hall. Time: 18:45 for a light supper. Cost: R360.
Bookings: UJW office (011) 648-1053 or Bev:
082-574-4770: E-mail: [email protected]
Friday (October 23)
Thursday (October 29)
• UZLC presents Menachem Kaye from Octogen
Financial Services on “How Much Money is Enough!”
• RCHCC Thursday matinee - “Monsieur Ibrahim” starring Omar Sharif.
Sunday (October 25)
Sunday (November 1)
Thursday (October 22)
• WIZO Etgar branch invites you to visit three of
Johannesburg’s prettiest gardens. Tickets: R160. To
book contact Helen Maisels-Trisk on 083-267-2607
or to book with a credit card contact Sandy on (011)
645-2515.
• Second Innings presents Chazzan Ezra Sher “Succot Party with Ezra Sher and Friends”. Cost: R30
per person. Bookings: Ros Berman (011) 880-6864
or Omnia Nock (011) 325-6128.
• Beyachad is screening “Tevye” at 10:00 for 10:30
with a discussion by Selwyn Klass. Donation: R30
THE BRIDGE LOUNGE by Jeff Sapire
IT'S ALWAYS quite special when a hand
which one reads about in the books crops up at
the table. How would you have done on this
"rara avis"?
Barry Bilewitz [email protected]
6D - No room for science, so a practical
choice, which must have some play.
I think that West should have broken the
rule about a pre-emptor not bidding again.
It's an extreme case here, and with this shape
and no defence, 6S doubled cannot be expensive. It also sounds very much as if 6D is
going to make.
At the table West led the ace of spades and
that was the end of that. The players were
about to start the next hand when East pointed out that 6D could have been beaten! All it
required was for a brave West to underlead
his spade sequence, giving East the first trick
with the seven.
Now a thoughtful defender, on winning the
trick, would ask himself what was going on.
And the only conclusion to be drawn is that
partner was desperate to place you on lead and with five clubs in dummy and five in
hand it could only be a club ruff that partner
was seeking.
A further point is that the correct technical
lead is the S4, which itself is a suit preference
for the lower outside suit. It takes some guts
to do things like this, because on another layout declarer may have the ten of spades,
where East happens to have an outside trick,
and one ends up looking silly. But it's the kind
of lead that most experts would make.
Every Tuesday (semi-beginners) and
Wednesday (intermediate) at 10:00 I run
bridge workshops at the Great Park Shul, off
Glenhove Rd. For more information, call me
on
082-551-2526
or
e-mail
me
at
[email protected]
• RCHCC is screening “Persepolis” at 19:30.
• UJW - Helen Suzman branch presents “Magical
Journey” with Kate Turkington”. Venue: HOD Hall
Oaklands. Time: 10:00 for 10:30. Cost: R400 double,
R225 single (including brunch). Booking: (011)
6481053.
Tuesday (November 10)
• Second Innings presents Willy Kirsh, talking on “My
Experiences at Primedia”, at 14:30. Contact Siggy
Meinstein on 082-443-2711.
CROSSWORD NO 137
BY LEAH SIMON
ACROSS:
1. Not entirely evil, editor departs from
candle tip (4)
3. A tendency to softly bewitch (8)
8. Nothing for old city in south - but it
belongs to us (4)
9. —— —— Story, Leonard Bernstein
musical (8)
11. Rich win ought to be about a time for
unnatural mischief (8, 4)
13. Carry on about a total in the east (6)
14. Ask over to vie about tin (6)
17. Turn on the heat in Bombay - unseasonally (6, 6)
20. Warned about it - but approached (4,
4)
21. Dear Ian conceals operatic song (4)
22. But the German must need to 1
return to Scottish town! (8)
23. Gentle lullabye conceals a
Hebrew month (4)
8
DOWN:
1. Insect is a big deal! (4, 4)
11
2. Dog consumed squadron leader
for clerics (7)
13
4. Using organs for ogling (6)
5. Aching, put 100 out - and regaining distance (8, 2)
6. Too bad, I eulogise - hiding my
farewell (5)
19
7. Article in the north at that time (4)
10. Somehow made nothing pinch - 20
and took up the cause (10)
12. Hear bell around German tav22
ern (4, 4)
15. Rail mom badly - that’s unethical! (7)
16. Pins a net, but mad inside (6)
18. Sister’s daughter finds it nice around
east (5)
19. I would have each notion (4)
SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD NO 136
ACROSS: 1. Duty; 3. Thick set; 8. Vied; 9.
Swindled; 11. Lost for words; 13. Sanity;
14. Athens; 17. Come as you are; 20. The
Hours; 21. Spat; 22. Black eye; 23. Lend.
DOWN: 1. Devilish; 2. Treason; 4.
Howard; 5. Contortion; 6. Salad; 7. Tidy;
10. Off the hook; 12. Assented; 15.
Example; 16. Osprey; 18. Opera; 19. Stab.
2
3
4
6
5
7
9
10
12
14
15
16
17
18
21
23
09 - 16 October 2009
SA JEWISH REPORT
21
Beating swords into green ploughshares in Israel
DINA KRAFT
TEL AVIV
IT’S A new way of beating swords
into ploughshares.
Israel, which long has been a
global leader in military technology, is adapting its technologies to
develop green advances. Technology borrowed from building
helicopter propellers is being used
to produce more efficient wind
turbines. Israeli know-how constructing satellites is being applied
to improve solar power.
“We definitely leverage a lot of
know-how in a variety of disciplines - including materials, chemistry, thermal dynamics - accumulated from our experience with
military and homeland security
technology for developing renewable energy technologies,” said
Meni Maor, vice president of business development for Rotem, a
Dimona-based company that commercialises technologies first used
in Israel’s defence industry.
The company is something of a
case study on the subject. In the
past three years, Rotem has begun
to focus on renewable energy technology with projects on solar and
hydrogen power, wind energy and
bio-fuel.
BrightSource Energy, which is
developing the world’s largest
solar thermal plant in Southern
California, is piloting its technology at Rotem.
“The whole world is highly motivated to invest in the clean-tech
sector as people search for interesting technologies for more effective energy generation because of
the threat of global warming and
cost of oil prices,” said Maor, not-
ing Israel’s special security-motivated reasons to reduce the global
dependence on oil, much of which
comes from Arab states.
As part of that goal, Israel
recently signed on to be one of the
first countries to pilot the driving
of environmentally clean electric
cars on a large scale as part of a
project sponsored by the company
Better Place, in partnership with
motor manufacturers Renault and
Nissan. The robotics for charging
the batteries in the cars is based in
part on aerospace technology.
Another example of the transfer
of military technology to clean
tech is work being done by Israel
Aeronautics Industries, one of the
country’s most prominent defence
companies. Its researchers are
tapping into their experience in
aeronautics to develop wind energy and wind turbines.
One way is by using software
used to calculate the optimisation
of the aerodymanic profile of an
airplane wing to make a better
turbine blade. The company hopes
other research-and-development
experience will lead to the creation of a higher-performance,
lower-weight wind turbine that
costs less.
“We are identifying the potential
of IAI engineering to provide
added value to the clean-tech sector in general and wind turbines
in particular,” said an IAI official
who spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the security-related nature of the work. “We
are trying to identify what assets
we can bring and provide on the
market end.”
IAI also is working to help create what is being called “clean,
Wind turbines in Israel, such as these seen near Kibbutz Ein Zivan in the Golan Heights, are being
improved by technology created for military helicopter propellers. (PHOTOGRAPH: HAIM AZULAY/FLASH90/JTA)
green aircraft” as part of a
European initiative, joining forces
with Airbus to develop an environmentally friendly system for airplanes taxiing at airports aimed at
saving fuel and decreasing noise
levels and air pollution. The technology would use a system that
allows planes to taxi to and from
the gate without using their jet
engines.
In addition to technologies being
transferred from the military
world to the clean-tech sector,
there is also manpower transfer. A
growing number of retired army
officers and scientists are playing
leading roles in Israel’s clean-tech
industry.
Yom-Tov Samia, a retired gener-
al and former head of the Israel
Defence Forces’ Southern Command, handles the investment
firm Israel Corp’s clean-tech
investments. Moshe Kaplinsky, a
former IDF deputy chief of staff, is
now CEO of Better Place’s Israel
operation.
Samia spoke recently at a gathering of industry professionals
sponsored by the investment firm
Israel Cleantech Ventures as part
of a panel of former IDF officials
now working in clean tech.
“It’s a lot of fun to work in this
field. I’m driven by the sense of
curiosity it fosters,” he told an
overflow crowd. “There is also a
sense of national responsibility to
what we are doing.”
Elad Frankel, CEO of Aqwise,
an advanced wastewater treatment solutions company and veteran of a prestigious intelligence
unit called 8200, spoke of how
experience gained in the army is
good preparation for the industry.
He said it was in the army that
he learned to analyse complex
problems and come up with solutions with limited resources.
“In the army we learn how to
follow through on a mission,”
Frankel said.
“And now we have the cleantech revolution, which is doing
good things not just when it comes
to water and energy. It’s also giving Israel a name in a more positive industry.” (JTA)
09 - 16 October 2009
22 SA JEWISH REPORT
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(011) 442-6404
COMPUTERS
ROODMAN
COMPUTERS
Specialising in training of
basic software skills; software upgrading & computer maintenance.
We come to you!
Raymond Roodman:
082-528-7380
079-8999-386
He will be responsible for all aspects of Jewish life
and interest in the community and also be
required to teach the relevant Jewish studies
courses in the Jewish day School.
A good singing voice is a recommendation.
Please respond with your Curriculum Vitae,
including references, to the PEHC Chairman,
Mr A Aires via email:
[email protected] before 23rd
October 2009
EX ISRAELI SERVICEMAN
offers safe and secure lifts. 24hrs. Airport lifts from R150 also
appointments, malls, courier etc
from R50.
Call Neil 072-050-9927
HIRE
CASTLEMANIA
Jumping Castles for hire.
Weekend deliveries.
www.fantasiacastles.co.za
GLENDA: (011) 452-1958
LIFTS
CAPE TOWN
HOWIE'S SHUTTLE
Airport transfers
General lifting
Scenic drives
Day trips
Driver for hire.
Full passenger liability cover.
Phone Howard
082-711-4616
CAPE TOWN
SHUTTLE
COMING TO
CAPE TOWN?
AFFORDABLE
RATES.
AIRPORT
TRANSFERS
FROM R160
NEW
COMFORTABLE
VEHICLE
PHONE ANDY
082-336-9780
GENERAL
HOME SERVICES
CLEANING
IRENE'S SCHLEP
SERVICE
I will take you anywhere:
School, Shops, Doctor, Friends
and Airport. Honest and
trustworthy. Schlepped by Irene
072-356-0282
Not on Shabbat
LIFTS AVAILABLE
For all age groups and to all
areas in JHB, Sandton and
Airport.
Contact Johnny
082-328-3070 or
082-876-9042
Rabbi required for the
Port Elizabeth Hebrew Congregation
TUITION AND EDUCATION
BRAINTRUST TUTORS
Un-locking Potential.
Private, custom tutoring for all
school subjects in the comfort of
your home. We fill in gaps in
past syllabus, keep the student
up to date with current work and
prepare students for tests and
exams.
Contact: Lior:
079-551-5555
[email protected]
A-TAXI SERVICE
Let Warren Pogorelsky chauffeur
you to your destination in
Jo’burg and back only R100
round trip.
Tel: 082-399-6187
SERVICES
The PE Hebrew Congregation requires the
full-time services of a Community Rabbi to start
in January 2010.
LIFTS
GENERAL
HANDY GRAMPS
Household, general repairs and
maintenance.
MITCH 072-196-1939
RAYMOND K'S LIFTS
A reliable lift service.
Specialising in lifts to & from airports, shops, appointments,
companion.
Call Raymond
076-481-1495
PLUMBER
SMILE-LEE'S LIFTS
A reliable lift service.
Specialising in lifts to and from
airports, shops, appointments,
casinos and courier.
Call Charna 083-391-6612
ABSOLUTELY ALL
Home repairs,
General maintenance
and electrical,
24 hours
Call Mendel
084 559 7923
(011) 640-1429
Pensioners 10% discount
09 - 16 October 2009
SECURITY
SA JEWISH REPORT 23
PROPERTY
AROUND THE WORLD
FOR SALE
MUIZENBERG
FLATS FOR SALE
CINNABAR
Stunning views.
3 bed, 2 bath, guest / storeroom. Maids' room, lock-up
garage, parking, 24-hour
security.
ARLINGTON COURT
Lounge/dining room, 3 bed &
maid’s room.
FOR SALE
GENERAL
TOILET PAPER
SPECIAL
2 ply 48’s R149
1 ply 48’s R110
Free Delivery
depending on area
Min 2 bales
Contact Jenny:
078-715-4565
PROPERTY
Call Jean Tockar
072-342-0510
(a/h) (021) 788-7578
VACANCIES
WANTED
EXPERIENCED LEGAL
LITIGATION SECRETARY
seeks full-time position - computer literate
CONTACT MELANIE
079-646-7091
AUDIT COMPANY
SEEKS
REGISTERED CA
Audit Company in
Morningside
(Sandton) is seeking a registered
CA for a managerial and partnership position.
Salary Negotiable
Please forward
any queries and
CV's to:
[email protected]
Contact Karen
011 532 9612
FLATS
FURNISHED FLAT
MELROSE
Spacious, north facing, 2 bedroomed flat, 1.5 bathrooms,
153m2, 24 hour security, pool in
complex, balcony overlooking
large garden, 1 underground
parking. R11 000 pm.
Nov - May
(011) 880-2862
GLENHAZEL
Sunny, spacious, 1 bed flat to
let. Rent R4 500.
Phone Mike
082-782-8262
LINKSFIELD PLACE
3 beds, 2 baths, encl. sun porch,
ground floor, garden apart,
garage, recently renovated
HENRY: 082-784-2133
SWITCHBOARD/
RECEPTION
A well presented applicant
wanting to secure a full time
reception post. Well spoken
and reliable. References
available on request.
Ref 4849
BOOKKEEPER
Energetic senior available for
a flexi time bookkeeping
post. Ex professional.
Proficient in all aspects of
Windows Office.
Ref 1739
VEHICLES
WANTED
TO LET / SHARE
ARE YOU
IMMIGRATING
OVERSEAS AND
WANT TO SELL
YOUR VEHICLE?
TO LET: R7 500
Fully-furnished,
Royal Linksfield
Sandringham.
2 beds, 2 baths, study,
open-plan kosher kitchen, 2
gardens, 1 garage.
Call June
083-226-3741 or
(011) 640-4967
Please Contact
Solly Kramer
082-922-3597
anytime
NEWS IN BRIEF
OBAMA TO IRAN: INSPECTIONS WITHIN TWO WEEKS
WASHINGTON - President
Barack Obama wants Iran to
allow "unfettered" access to the
Qom nuclear facility within two
weeks if negotiations are to continue.
Obama spoke last week
Thursday afternoon from the
White House after negotiators in
Geneva announced that Iran
would allow UN nuclear inspectors to visit its second uranium
enrichment plant.
The concession, announced
last week Thursday after a
meeting in Geneva between representatives from Iran and
major world powers, paved the
way for a second meeting aimed
at ending the Islamic Republic's
isolation in exchange for proof
that it does not have a nuclear
weapons programme.
The EU representative at the
meeting, Javier Solana, said the
sides had yet to set a date for the
inspection by officials of the
International Atomic Energy
Agency, but it would be soon.
Obama said it must happen
within two weeks.
"Since Iran has now agreed to
co-operate fully and immediately with the International Atomic
Energy Agency, it must grant
unfettered access to IAEA
inspectors within two weeks,"
Obama said in a statement.
"I've been in close touch with
the head of
the IAEA,
Mohammed ElBaradei, who will
be travelling to Tehran in the
days ahead. He has my full support, and the Iranian government must grant the IAEA full
access to the site in Qom."
Obama said the talks were
"constructive."
Iran's revelation of a uranium
enrichment plant at Qom, in
addition to its known enrichment centre at Natanz, intensified calls in the US and Europe
for punishing sanctions. Iran
revealed the existence of the
Qom reactor just as Western
powers were about to confront it
with intelligence showing such a
plant was in place.
In another agreement, the
major powers - the US, China,
Russia, Germany, France and
Britain - agreed to allow Iran to
export low-grade uranium for
further enrichment, then to reimport it for medical purposes.
Obama suggested Iran must
release all its low-grade uranium in order to build confidence.
"We support Iran's right to
peaceful nuclear power," he said.
"Taking the step of transferring
its low enriched uranium to a
third country would be a step
towards building confidence
that Iran's programme is in fact
peaceful."
In a first, top Iranian and US
officials met bilaterally during
the meeting: William Burns, the
top ME affairs official at the US
State Department, met Saeed
Jalili, the top Iranian negotiator.
Separately, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, visited Washington - the first
such visit since 1998. Mottaki
was visiting staffers at the
Iranian interest section at the
Pakistani Embassy. Iran and the
United States do not have diplomatic relations. (JTA)
24
SA JEWISH REPORT
09 - 16 October 2009
Shaun then decided to go for blood tests and the results were quite shocking.
“They found a strong bilharzia count. I must have got it during the Dusi.”
Second place a silver lining for Shaun
JACK MILNER
THERE’S AN American expression derived
from baseball that often when things are
going well, life tends to throw a curve ball at
you. Canoeist Shaun Rubenstein recently got
to understand the meaning of that saying.
Fortunately, it all ended well for Shaun
who came back from the World Marathon
Championships with a silver medal in the
K2 event.
Everything began pretty well this year for
the South African Olympic paddler. He participated in the Dusi Marathon and then
went into the South African Sprint
Championships. As he had done previously
Shaun received full marks at the event, winning 10 out of the 10 events in which he participated.
“Although I won them, I was not feeling
great. I couldn’t understand it as my training was going really well,” said Shaun.
He did not give it too much thought at
that stage and went off to Europe to compete at events in Poland and Hungary. His
results were disappointingly mixed.
“In the 1000m K1 I was knocked out in the
semis, something that has not happened to
me in a long time.”
In the K2 events with Mike Arthur, he
fared slightly better, finishing seventh in
the 500m in Poland and fourth at the
Hungarian event. Then, in a surprise performance, they got second in the 200m.
“What was so confusing for me is that in
the endurance events, which are normally
my strength, the results were shocking but
in the shorter events, we had some awesome results.”
At the end of June, Shaun took his place
in the SA Marathon Championships and as
expected, he won. The problem was that he
won it by a whisker. “Normally I just toy
with the local opposition but this time they
made me work hard. And after it, I felt real-
ly tired.”
Shaun then decided to go for blood tests
and the results were quite shocking. “They
found a strong bilharzia count. I must have
got it during the Dusi.”
He started treatment but was only left
with three weeks to train for the World
Sprint Championships in Halifax, Canada.
It started poorly and got event worse.
“Once again the 1000m K1 was shocking,
but on this occasion the 500m K1 was just as
bad. I lost in the semifinals of both event.”
Once again the redeeming race was the
200m K2 where they finished sixth overall.
“At least I had one decent result.”
When he came back to South Africa,
Shaun had a second set of blood tests. They
still revealed bilharzia but the count was
down. What they did find this time around
were Giardia parasites. “They live in the
intestine and it zaps your immune system,”
explained Shaun.
So, he went on a stringent course of
deworming tablets only two weeks before
the start of the World Marathon
Championships.
Things started finally looking up. “One
week before the champs I did my best 2km
time trial and also broke the club 10km
time trial record. I went off to Portugal having had just two weeks of training. That
was not ideal.
“Where normally in this situation I
would be flying, this time I went into the
event feeling like a beginner.”
The World Marathon Championships,
which Shaun had won before, took place
this time in Crestuma, Portugal, which is
close to Porto. However, things did not
begin well in the K1. “I had a terrible first
15km. I started well but then my heart rate
went up in the opening sprint and it just
didn’t come down.
“At the first portage I got dropped from
the first bunch. I was just feeling terrible. I
Israel names Moldova
World Cup qualifier squad
JERUSALEM - Roberto Colautti has been
named in the Israel squad for this weekend’s World Cup Soccer qualifier against
Moldova, despite publicly criticising coach
Dror Kashtan after being dropped ahead of
last month’s matches against Latvia and
Luxembourg.
The 27-year-old Borussia Monchengladbach striker claimed last month that
Kashtan does not respect him, but the veteran coach said he was not upset with
Colautti’s reaction as it showed he cared,
and on Sunday he called him up to the
squad. Israel, which still has a slender
chance of reaching the World Cup in South
Africa, faces Moldova at National Stadium
in Ramat Gan at the weekend before playing
Switzerland on the road the following
Wednesday.
Israel squad: Goalkeepers: Dudu Aoute
(RCD Mallorca), Nir Davidovich (Maccabi
Haifa), Liran Strauber (Maccabi Tel Aviv).
Defenders: Dedi Ben-Dayan (Hapoel Tel
Aviv), Dekel Keinan (Maccabi Haifa), Tal
Ben-Haim
(Portsmouth),
Yoav
Ziv
(Lokeren), Avi Strul (Lokeren), Eyal
Meshumar (Maccabi Haifa), Dean Mori
(Bnei Yehuda), Klemi Saban (Maccabi
Netanya).
Midfielders: Biram Kiyal (Maccabi Haifa),
Yossi Benayoun (Liverpool), Aviram
Bruchian (Betar Jerusalem), Avihai Yadin
(Hapoel Tel Aviv), Tamir Cohen (Bolton),
Gili Vermut (Hapoel Tel Aviv). Forwards:
Ben Sahar (Espanyol), Barak Itzhaki (Betar
Jerusalem), Elyaniv Barda (Genk), Roberto
Colautti (Borussia Monchengladbach), Itai
Shechter (Hapoel Tel Aviv).
Have you entered for
2010 Comrades yet?
MORE THAN 9 000 athletes have already
registered to run in next year’s Comrades
Marathon. That means there are only 6 000
spots available.
On top of it, please note that the 9 000-plus
exclude postal entries!
So, get your entry in to avoid disapointment! For further information contact
www.comrades.com or Mr Price Stores,
nationwide.
Please note that NO extensions will be
allowed.
Comrades Marathon Association is at 18
Connaught Road Pietermaritzburg 3201 ~
PO Box 100621 Scottsville 3209
Telephone: +27 33 8978650 ~ Facsimile:
+27 33 8978660 - Email: [email protected]
www.comrades.com
THE FULL FIGURE OF HERMES, HEAD OF HERMES AND THE WORDS,
“COMRADES” AND “COMRADES MARATHON” ARE REGISTERED
TRADEMARKS OF THE COMRADES MARATHON ASSOCIATION.
RUN UNDER THE AUSPICES OF KZNA AND ASA.
took it easy and just tried to stay in touch
without pushing it. By the third lap I started to feel better.”
Shaun started to close the gap and by the
fourth lap, he was back in the front group.
By the time they reached the seventh
portage with just 1km to go, Shaun was in
the leading five. “Suddenly I felt buggered.
By then, all the catching up had taken its
toll.”
Three canoeists managed to break away
and it was Spain’s Manuel Busto, the man
Shaun had beaten to win the title, who
went on to win. Shaun finished fourth, just
one second behind the third placed finisher.
“As I had won it before, I went into the
event with high expectations so the outcome was disappointing.”
Shaun teamed up with compatriot Ant
Stott for the K2 event and it was a whole different story. “From the outset I felt really
good. We started well and at the first
portage four boats broke away and the rest
were left in their wake.
“We knew at that stage we were well in
contention and our objective was not to
make a mistake and throw it away.
“We did as much as we had to do and save
as much energy as we could for the final
sprint.”
The four teams were from Spain,
Portugal, the Czech Republic and the South
African pair. One of the members of the
Spanish team had won the World Sprint
1000m in Canada.
“At the final portage Spain and ourselves
broke away. They were in front and we sat
Shaun Rubenstein (right) and Ant Stott
standing on the podium after winning
their silver medals at the World Marathon
Championships in Portugal.
in their slipstream.”
With 300m to go Shaun and Ant moved up
to challenge and with 250m to go, edged
into the lead. However, the Spaniards came
back to draw level and in the final 100m, got
back their advantage to win by just a half a
length.
“I was happy to win silver,” said Shaun.
“It was a clean race, we made no mistakes,
and they were just slightly faster than us
on the day. But with the K1, I knew I could
have done better.”
At least it all ended on an optimistic note
and Shaun knows he is back on track.