Pride and responsibility

Election season is finally behind us, although those of us in Johannesburg and Tshwane will have to wait a little longer to learn who will be running our cities. We are not alone in our uncertainty. In Israel, the result appears to have brought even less clarity than ours. Whatever the coalition talks produce, it was heartening to see how well our local elections were conducted, and I am once again very proud of the election observers who played such an important part in the day. 

Their role did not go unnoticed. In his address at the announcement of the results, Mosotho Moepya, chairperson of the Electoral Commission of South Africa, made a point of acknowledging them. 

“We particularly acknowledge the role of election observers. For these elections, we accredited about 6 000 observers from 121 organisations. Their presence and independent scrutiny are an important part of building confidence in elections,” he said. 

Our observer team will spend the coming days completing its reports, and these will give us a clearer picture of how this year’s polls were run. To all 116 South African Jewish Board of Deputies volunteers who gave their time, energy, and commitment to this mission, thank you. Your contribution matters. We are proud to have played our part in strengthening confidence in our democracy, and it was you who made that possible. 

Over the weekend we were fortunate to be addressed by Stephen D Smith OBE, chief executive and co-founder of StoryFile, the world’s first artificial intelligence conversational video platform. Mr Smith is also executive director emeritus of the USC Shoah Foundation, the archive founded by Steven Spielberg to document the Holocaust and genocide. 

Mr Smith is launching a project with the National Library of Israel to record the stories of Jews across the diaspora, and South Africa will be part of it. In fact, it has already begun here, with the first interviews recorded over the past few days. The result will be a virtual, interactive archive for future generations who want to understand Jewish life and experience around the world. For that reason the collection has to be as broad as possible. It must include Jews from every walk and stage of life, and with every kind of connection to their Jewish identity, from the deeply observant to those whose Jewishness lives mostly at the Seder table. We are delighted to be partnering with Mr Smith, and I look forward to seeing our stories take their place among the 20 000 interviews that will make up the first edition. 

In his address, Mr Smith described certain elements of the Jewish story that have come up again and again in the interviews collected so far. One he spoke about in particular was a deep sense that Jewish identity carries both pride and responsibility, and I have no doubt our South African stories will echo this sentiment.