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How does one fully understand the horrific violence and degradation that our Israeli brothers and sisters endured last weekend? How do you forget the image of...
It’s a new year, the flowers are blossoming, and summer is well on its way. Then, why oh why do we all seem so exhausted and...
As we count down to Yom Kippur this weekend, I cannot help wondering why the University of Cape Town (UCT) doesn’t just apologise to the South...
As we are about to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, I have been marvelling at how fast the year has flown by, not necessarily happily as nobody wants...
It’s difficult to imagine the depth of devastation and horror of last week’s inner-city fire in Johannesburg, in which 77 people including women and children were...
Yael Sherer turned being a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her father into a lifelong battle to change the law in Israel to...
Golda, with Helen Mirren, is certainly worth going to see, especially if you have a penchant for Israel and history. I left the cinema having learnt...
When I hear that Jewish people outside of South Africa feel sorry for us as they believe we’re all miserable, negative, and our lives are awful,...
It’s not often people celebrating their 100th birthday do so with a speech and a commitment to providing a bursary for a young Jewish person to...
Our minds are wired to avoid dwelling on the painful times in our past. It’s a relief on the one hand because it means we can...
Truth is inevitably stranger than fiction, and sometimes it’s so bizarre that it’s almost too difficult to believe. This week, when we were looking for stories,...
We all have our own way of doing good. You don’t have to be a multi-millionaire to help someone. You just need to be on the...
On Tuesday this week, at least four Israeli newspapers were distributed with jet-black front pages under their banner heads. The only words on the page were,...
“United we stand, divided we fall” is a commonly used phrase that goes to the very core of who we are as a Jewish people. This...
There was something quite magical in watching snowflakes fall in Johannesburg. It wasn’t a blizzard, so we could see each individual snowflake falling. It felt like...
As Liat Amar Arran, who has run the Israel Centre in South Africa for the past four and a half years, packs to return to Israel,...
When visitors leave, they often comment on the incredible strength of our community and how we band together to deal with adversity. They always comment on...
A colleague pointed out last week that after many successive publications with stories dominated by Israel, we had a recent period in which we didn’t publish...
Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein “implored” President Cyril Ramaphosa before his visit to Russia last weekend to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin to release Jewish American...
I feel immense pride when I see young people standing up for being Jewish and not allowing our haters to get the better of them. We...
As we commemorate Youth Day and celebrate Father’s Day, it’s heartbreaking to learn that there are children in our community who can’t depend on their parents...
South African powerlifter Ian Furman won gold at the World Bench Press Championships at Sun City on 28 May after more than 20 years training and...
There’s something exciting about being first at anything. When it’s a competition and you have worked hard for it, it’s hugely satisfying. When you’re chosen to...
The excitement was mounting for the planned reunion tour of Rabbitt – South Africa’s equivalent of The Beatles in the 1970s – 45 years after they...
There’s so much going on around us right now, but what dominates our dinner table chitchat? Solar. We’re all focused on keeping the lights on in...
I’m tired of negativity, not least my own. It gets me and everyone around me nowhere. It helps nobody, and all it does is make a...
It’s truly astonishing how easily history is rewritten to suit people’s personal rhetoric, and the impact of bias on the value of life. Israel is still...
The Lithuanian government is openly encouraging South African Litvaks (Jews of Lithuanian descent) to claim Lithuanian passports if they are eligible to do so, however the...
Do you remember how in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, we got so used to living with masks on that we felt naked without one?...
One of Lithuania’s most controversial plaques – for Litvaks (Jews descended from Lithuania) anyway – was overnight no longer in its pride of place in Vilnius,...
An esteemed medical expert was killed last week trying to ensure that nobody was hurt driving into a pothole in Sandringham that had been there almost...
I read on social media this week that on Yom Hashoah, we’re reminded of what happened when we didn’t have a Jewish state and Yom Hazikaron...
I grew up hearing about “der heim” from my grandfather, referring to this far off Baltic country called Lithuania. Most South African Jews did, but I...
It’s almost impossible to comprehend that of the 220 000 Jews brutally killed and dumped in pits in 200 sites across Lithuania, most were killed within six...
I have never witnessed as many people squirm as I did over the past week in Lithuania. They were reacting to talk of the Holocaust in...
Where in the world do people drop everything they are doing on a school or work night and spontaneously go out in their hundreds of thousands...
When something happens on your watch or on your property, can you refuse to accept responsibility for it because you weren’t intrinsically involved in it? That’s...
This week, we lost a giant in our community. Ann Harris was the tiniest giant I have ever come across. In her latter days, she looked...
The community was sucker punched this week with the government voting to downgrade the South African embassy in Israel to a mere liaison office. It’s true...
I love Israel deeply. More than anything, I want it to succeed as a country, a people, and, above all else, to be a light unto...
