Unapologetic champion of SA Jews and Israel

Community leader par excellence Marcia Parness cared deeply and wasn’t afraid to make that care known, no matter the consequences. Whether the subject was Israel, the South African Jewish community, or people with less than those around them, she is remembered for speaking her mind, standing firmly for the causes she believed in, and devoting decades of her life to serving others. 

Parness, who was in her mid-80s, died on 18 September following post-surgery complications. Honorary life president of both WIZO South Africa and the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), she had devoted decades to the community. 

“She had unbelievable integrity,” says community stalwart Reeva Forman, who knew Parness as both a colleague and friend at the SAZF. “At any meeting when we were discussing things, she would insist on her point of view being heard, even if it wasn’t popular. But she never said it aggressively. She always said it out of great concern. I don’t believe Marcia ever acted for her own sake or to prove something. She acted 100% in terms of the people who would benefit from any cause she espoused.” 

As a teen, Parness joined a Bnei Akiva dance group and discovered a Jewish world that hadn’t been central to her upbringing. When she realised her friends couldn’t eat at her family home because it wasn’t kosher, her mother told her that if she wanted to make the house kosher, she could do it herself. At 15, she did. 

That commitment grew into a lifetime of involvement in communal affairs. Parness became a pioneering woman in student Zionist leadership at the University of the Witwatersrand, and devoted much of her life to WIZO, eventually being honoured as a life president. 

Her concern extended far beyond the Jewish community. “She particularly cared a great deal about those who were less fortunate,” Forman says. “Be they in the Jewish community or in the wider South African community, she was always speaking about that.” Caring for “the poor, the neglected, the stranger” was, she believed, “deeply embedded in her very soul”. It was also what drew the two women together. “We both had a passion for the South African Jewish community, the wider South African community, and Israel,” Forman says. “Marcia was an activist like me, and when you have those passions in common, you automatically become colleagues and friends.” 

Parness also cared deeply about preserving the history of the community she had spent so much of her life serving. “She talked so much about the roots of the SAZF,” she says, describing Parness as “very, instrumental” in ensuring that its library and its material were protected. 

It was through that library that Eric Mathobo came to know a different, more personal side of Parness. She employed him as an assistant at the Beyachad library in 2003, and when he was later retrenched, she fought for his reinstatement. In 2006, she employed him again in the audiovisual department, and the two went on to work together on Yom Ha’atzmaut and Israel quiz events. 

“Her passion was the survival of the library,” Mathobo says, remembering how she helped raise funds when its future was uncertain. He notes her “incredible deep knowledge”, but even more strongly, her kindness. “What she taught me is a legacy that will remain with me forever.” 

For Mathobo, Parness became “a mother away from home”. Earlier this year, she called to tell him that he would be travelling to Israel, fulfilling what he described as his biggest dream. It would be his first journey outside South Africa and his first time on an aeroplane. “I was so thrilled going to Eretz Israel,” he says. It was one of many times over more than two decades in which Mathobo felt Parness had looked out for him. 

In their final conversation on 16 September, Parness had called to wish him happy birthday. She told him she would be going into hospital that Thursday. “The giant tree that has sheltered me for so many years has fallen,” he says. 

Forman was shocked by Parness’s sudden death. Around Rosh Hashanah, members of the SAZF leadership received short notice of her funeral, but “everyone dropped everything and rushed”, she says. “The entire SAZF leadership was present at her funeral.” For Forman, the response reflected the respect Parness had earned over a lifetime of communal involvement. 

What she will miss is Parness sitting among them as they discuss the “past, present, and future of the South African Jewish community, global Jewish community and Israel”, and her “total and utter devotion and integrity and just openness”. 

“With Marcia, you always knew you were getting what really concerned her from a place of deep concern for others.” 

For Forman, that is the measure of the woman she knew. “That’s the highest accolade I can give anyone, to have integrity in terms of Judaic and humanitarian values.” 

For Mathobo, the legacy is equally clear. “I will always remember her as a strong, kind, and great woman,” he says. “Lala ngokuthula, mbokodo. May your soul rest in eternal peace.”