The community we choose to be

The leafy garden suburb of Norwood in northeastern Johannesburg has never been predictable. It went from a working-class suburb to a bit more of an affluent area, but now it’s a little frayed at the edges. And it’s not even as big as a square kilometre. 

For decades, Norwood has been home to people from many backgrounds – Jews, Muslims, Italians, West Africans, and others – who have shared its pavements, shops, schools, and restaurants. Today, its most visible communities are Jewish and Muslim and they live side by side without, for the most part, any problems. 

Just a few weeks ago, we published an opinion piece celebrating exactly that. The writer described a place where a visibly Jewish person could buy kitke and chopped liver, walk past a Palestinian flag, and stop for a haircut at a Muslim-owned barber. Nothing dramatic happens. People greet one another, do business, and get on with their day. In the world we live in now, that ordinariness feels almost extraordinary. 

Then came the video of Rodney Plett outside Chabad of Norwood in the final hours of Yom Kippur. What was clearly a road rage incident became a confrontation in which a Jewish man vomited out vile, racist, and wholly unacceptable language at the Muslim man who was in the other car. No provocation, headache, hunger, anger, or road rage dispute can make what he uttered acceptable. 

It was painful to watch, not least of all because it was one of our own who was treating the other man with such contempt. It was even more horrific that it happened outside Chabad of Norwood on the holiest day of the Jewish year. At this time of year, we are meant to be confronting our failings, asking for forgiveness, and resolving to do better. It was hard to witness Plett on video saying these revolting things as he put on his kippah to go into shul. 

The Jewish response was swift, broad, and unequivocal. Rabbi Mordechai Rodal of Chabad of Norwood was clear from the get-go: this behaviour was abhorrent and unacceptable. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies called Plett’s actions offensive and unacceptable. Across the board, Jews refused to excuse, soften, or defend what we had heard. It makes clear that Plett spoke for himself, not for Judaism, not for Norwood, and not for us. 

Yet, even that resounding rejection wasn’t enough for those determined to hate us. For them, one Jew behaving disgracefully becomes evidence against all Jews – or, more pointedly, against all who support the Jewish State. It is the same blanket tarring that assumes every Jew who supports Israel supports Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Supporting Israel’s right to exist doesn’t require support for every Israeli leader, policy, or utterance, any more than citizenship or communal belonging demands unthinking approval of everyone who claims to speak in your name. 

We know how corrosive collective blame is because Jews encounter it constantly. One person’s wrongdoing is made to stand for a people; one politician’s extremism is attributed to every Zionist; every Jewish person is expected to answer for a government thousands of kilometres away. We should reject that lazy prejudice wherever it appears. 

But rejecting collective guilt doesn’t release us from collective responsibility for the values we choose to defend. 

Rabbi Rodal understood that distinction. He didn’t hide behind the fact that Plett was one congregant among many. He took responsibility as the rabbi of the shul outside which the incident occurred and responded quickly. He said there was no place for racism, prejudice, or demeaning language in the community, acknowledged the hurt caused, and made it clear that such behaviour couldn’t be tolerated. 

By the following morning, Rodal had spoken to Abdur Rahmaan Aziz, the man who recorded the encounter. He commended Aziz for the restraint with which he handled an intolerable situation and asked to meet him personally. That is what leadership looks like in an ugly moment: not taking blame for words you didn’t utter, but taking responsibility for what happens in the community you lead. Instead of issuing a statement and retreating, he reached across the wound in an attempt to heal it. 

While some poo-pooed it, Plett’s later apology also matters. In it, he acknowledged that he had mentioned the Israel-Gaza war because he knew it would hurt Aziz most, that Aziz had done nothing to deserve it, and that none of the circumstances he described excused what followed. He apologised to Aziz, to the Muslim community, to his congregation, and to Norwood, and said he would welcome the opportunity to apologise to Aziz personally. 

It is easy to apologise in print or online, especially when outrage is roaring and lawyers are involved. It is far harder to sit opposite the person you demeaned, look him in the eye, hear what your behaviour did to him, and apologise without qualification. I remain appalled that Plett behaved as he did. His willingness to seek that meeting cannot undo the harm, and it is the very least that accountability demands. Still, being prepared to face the person he hurt is a necessary and, in its own limited way, admirable step. 

Norwood offers us a useful reminder. Coexistence isn’t a grand declaration or a carefully staged photograph. It is built on ordinary encounters. It is about the shopkeeper who knows your order, the neighbour who watches your gate, the barber who asks after your family, and the people who make room for one another on a crowded pavement. It is also built into the difficult moments, when we decide whether one ugly incident will harden us against one another or push us to defend the decency we usually take for granted. 

We can’t allow this incident to become a weapon against the Jewish community. Nor should we ask the Muslim community to swallow its hurt for the sake of appearances. The way through isn’t denial or defensiveness. It is honesty, accountability, and the rebuilding of trust between people who still have to share the same streets tomorrow morning. 

This is a moment for Jewish and Muslim leaders in Norwood to speak to one another, but also for ordinary residents to keep doing what they have long done. That is to greet, listen, buy, sell, disagree, and refuse to dehumanise. A single video can travel around the world in minutes. The quieter work of being good neighbours rarely goes viral, but it is what holds a suburb – and a country – together. 

The Norwood celebrated in our pages a few weeks ago hasn’t disappeared. It was wounded by what happened, but it is still there in every ordinary exchange across difference. Let this incident be a lesson not in who we are destined to be, but in how we choose to be. We can choose not to be defined by suspicion, humiliation, and blanket hatred. We can choose instead to live side by side with respect, integrity, and brotherhood. 

As Rabbi Rodal put it in a television interview, “We all have so much in common. We are all G-d’s children.” Let’s focus on coming together and being one nation under one G-d. That is what Norwood deserves. It is what South Africa deserves. And, ultimately, it is what we all deserve. 

Shabbat Shalom and chag sameach 

Peta Krost 

Editor