Jews inextricably part of this place we call home

At the Investec Jewish Achiever Awards, we celebrate the remarkable and ongoing contribution made by the South African Jewish community to our country. 

This year, 861 members of our community were nominated for 10 awards, 104 finalists were interviewed by our five panels of judges, and nearly 11 000 people voted for their favourite nominees. 

But the awards don’t happen without a large team of people, many of us volunteers, who believe that we can build a stronger community by celebrating each other’s successes and by creating role models for all of South Africa. 

Our thanks to Investec, our title sponsor, which has an unbreakable bond with our community, as its trusted banker and investment partner. 

But as Jews we are a family and so many of our sponsors are the families that have built our community and our nation. We thank our extended family, the Kirsh family, the Ellerine family, the Lubner family, the Ichikowitz family, the Mann family, and our relatives at Europcar. These are the great entrepreneurs whose names are synonymous with business and philanthropy in South Africa; they are the bedrock of our nation. 

I also thank our teams of judges who give selflessly of their time and, most especially, I thank all of our volunteers and professional staff. 

To the glamorous and brilliant Dina Diamond, the magician that is Dori Weil, who proves that nothing is impossible, the creative genius that is Marc Hirschowitz, the nurturing force feeder that is Jodi Kramer, the resilient spirit that is Tammy Brower, and our professional team of Britt Landsman, Sandy Furman, Gilana Lab, Odi Mashishi, Sandiswa Memela, and Peta Krost. Our music maestros are Vicky Friedman and Jonathan Birin, our video producer, Andrea Baker, and our talented photographic director is Adi Loveland. Our event manager, Felicity Kantor, is our rock and the safest pair of hands in the business. 

This year, we honour the rich heritage that is the tapestry of Jewish communities around the globe, each community expressing its identity through its own music, flavours, aromas, art, and traditions. Across geography, each Jewish community has held onto the golden thread of Jewish faith, culture, and tradition, which connects us all through time and place. 

By some quirk of fate, the Jews who arrived in South Africa came from Eastern Europe where Jews are pale. But Jews have no colour; in fact, they have every colour. 

For more than 2 000 years, Jews have lived in every corner of the world. From the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the highlands of Ethiopia; from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the bustling cities of India, the Silk Road in China, and the bustling markets of Persia; from the rubber plantations of the Amazon to the frozen tundra of Alaska. Everywhere, Jewish communities have thrived and enriched the societies in which they have lived. 

The first formal Jewish Hebrew congregation in South Africa was established in the shadows of Table Mountain in 1841. Then came the diamond and gold rushes, which brought in Jewish labourers from England and Jewish financiers from Germany. Oppression, pogroms, and persecution in Eastern Europe sparked mass emigration in the early 1900s, which enriched our community with the trade unionists, the communists, the industrialists, the entrepreneurs, the shopkeepers, the smouses, the academics, the doctors, and lawyers who define our community today. 

But there is no greater evidence of the roots of our community in the dusty red soil of Africa as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. 

In 1976, pupils gathered at the Morris Isaacson High School to protest the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in African schools. Morris Isaacson was a Jewish philanthropist who had donated and rebuilt the school to uplift the quality of black education in the township. 

Things soon turned violent. Police opened fire on the protesters, ultimately killing 575 people. The mob turned for revenge on anyone they could find, attacking Dr Melville Edelstein, a Jewish social worker and community activist who had returned to Soweto to try rescue some of his staff from the uprising. We were honoured at the awards to be in the presence of Dr Edelstein’s daughter, who mourns the murder of her father 50 years ago. 

The Morris Isaacson school hall was rebuilt by Mendel Kaplan and his family from the company Cape Gate. It was Joy Coplan who brought the idea of creating the Morris Isaacson Centre for Music to the Kaplan family. The centre’s penny whistle ensemble opened the awards gala dinner and its female string quintet performed as well. We were delighted that both Coplan and Jill Kaplan joined us on the evening. Also significant is that Wayne Sussman chairs the Morris Isaacson Centre for Music. 

This remarkable land has been our community’s home for 185 years. For all its chaos and troubles, it has allowed us to flourish, to contribute, to build this nation. Our fingerprints and DNA are spread over its soil, its buildings, its stores, and its history. 

We have connections to our spiritual home, we have friends and family in the far reaches of the planet – but for us, this piece of earth, the dusty cornfields of the Free State, the red soil of Africa, the lightning in a Highveld sky, the smell of fynbos in the Cape, the ancient baobabs of Limpopo, and the rolling hills of KwaZulu-Natal, for us, this will always be home. 

• Howard Sackstein is the chairperson of the Investec Jewish Achiever Awards.