Welcoming our friends

Every so often, we get to open our doors and show gratitude to the people who have stood beside us. On Shabbat, the Board hosted an extraordinary evening in honour of US Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III, the US embassy, and the members of his diplomatic team who have supported us through some of the most difficult years our community has known. 

The evening began with us walking together to a Friday-night shul service. From there, the ambassador and his staff, each of them wearing a shweshwe kippah, walked with us through the streets of Glenhazel to the dinner. It was an immersive evening where we welcomed friends not simply to a meal but into the rhythm of our community and the heart of our most Jewish neighbourhood. 

At the dinner, South African Jewish Board of Deputies president Zev Krengel spoke about the long history of cooperation between the US embassy and our community, and thanked the ambassador and the United States for the support they’ve consistently shown the Jewish people, and our community in particular. 

The ambassador then made an impassioned speech about the closeness between his Catholic faith and the Jewish people, and about his steadfast support for our community and for Israel. 

This support has never been abstract. In the days after 7 October, which were among the darkest world Jewry has known, the concern from the US embassy was constant. When serious issues arose, our leaders heard directly from diplomats at the embassy. One of the first meetings Ambassador Bozell held after arriving in the country was with our leadership, and he later hosted a roundtable with the Board to engage on antisemitism in South Africa. This is what real allyship looks like, and it is exactly why it mattered so much to say thank you, and to welcome him into our “home”. 

On Friday afternoon, a high-level meeting was held between our national leadership, including colleagues from Cape Town, and the Hawks [the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation]. We have long-standing relationships across the national security cluster, and engagements like this are essential in creating channels of communication with these critical bodies for our community. While we have differed with our government on other issues, it has consistently stood by us on security issues. 

Then on Monday morning, Zev Krengel hosted a diplomatic engagement with incoming Israeli Deputy Ambassador Hen Feder and visiting Ambassador Ilan Fluss. Hen will serve as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Pretoria, and takes up the role at a particularly sensitive moment in the relationship between Israel and South Africa. He previously served as spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Paris. It was wonderful to meet him at the start of his tenure, to introduce him to our communal leadership. 

Last week also brought the publication of the Anti-Defamation League’s J7 report on antisemitism, which examines the seven largest Jewish communities in the world and their experiences of this hatred. We are not among the J7, but its findings still give us a valuable point of comparison. The picture is a harrowing one, a wave of antisemitism that has swept across the globe. South Africa remains less affected than many of our fellow communities. That is no reason for complacency. Several of the report’s themes apply to us too, and we must keep working to ensure our incidents of antisemitism continue to remain low.