What leading Jewish community of KZN taught me

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, then when?” Hillel’s words in Pirkei Avot have sat with me throughout my term as president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) KwaZulu-Natal Council, not as a slogan, but as an instruction. A community must protect itself, must never turn so inwards it forgets the world around it, and must act now, because leadership deferred is leadership abdicated. 

Fourteen months ago, this community entrusted me to lead its council. As I step back from my role, I want to share what I set out to build, and what building it taught me – about leadership, continuity, and what a small, close-knit community on the eastern edge of the country can mean to Jewish South Africa as a whole. 

I took office wanting to revitalise an organisation that had drifted from its core mandate: to be this community’s voice to the outside world and its shield against antisemitism. Much of the early work was deeply unglamorous: reconstituting structures, updating community trusts, and rebuilding financial oversight. It was slow, thankless, and at times met with real resistance. 

Reform is uncomfortable. But governance is not a technical detail of Jewish leadership; it is the foundation of it. An organisation cannot credibly speak for its people if it cannot first account for itself.  

Although our core mandate is to protect Jewish civil liberties and combat antisemitism, we are not just a wall. Our job is to be a bridge. So, I made it my mission to represent my community to the broader society. I met KwaZulu-Natal Premier (KZN) Thami Ntuli within weeks of taking office; hosted the United States consul general for a tour of the Durban Holocaust & Genocide Centre; met the Indian consul general; and engaged the South African Hindu Maha Sabha. I shared a Hebrew prayer at a memorial service at St Thomas Church, and broke bread at an Interfaith Iftar at the Grey Street Mosque. I carried out my roles on the KwaZulu-Natal Interreligious Leaders Council and the Religions for Peace South Africa executive because a Jewish voice needed to be there. 

One of the highlights, for me, was being part of a panel at the G20 Interfaith Forum in Cape Town, speaking about the work of the Jewish refugee agency HIAS South Africa. At a moment when Jewish voices are being pushed out of many rooms around the world, we were invited into one of the most consequential.  

This year, our council hosted a Freedom Seder, bringing government, political parties, interfaith partners, and media together around a Pesach table, where we told the Jewish people’s journey of redemption, from slavery to freedom, likening it to the transition from apartheid to democracy. Watching guests who had never sat at a seder before making the connection between the Jewish story and that of our country was truly inspiring. 

When xenophobic violence swept through our province, we partnered with HIAS South Africa to launch an emergency food relief appeal, guided by tikkun olam (repairing the world), tzedakah (justice), and our ancient obligation to the stranger. Our community answered generously. In May alone, we distributed food parcels to more than 120 refugee and asylum-seeker families, and we continued our handovers of food, goods, and baby items in the weeks leading up to, and in the wake of, the 30 June anti-migrant protests, alongside the Catholic Archdiocese Refugee Pastoral Care. South African Jewry descends largely from people who fled. When mobs march through the streets demanding to see papers and deciding who belongs and who does not, we recognise the chilling pattern. We did not stand on the sidelines. 

We also stood up for our own. When protests outside the Durban Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Durban Progressive Shul infringed on our members’ right to pray in peace, I issued a press release and wrote to the eThekwini mayor, pushing for engagement with the SA Police Service, metro police, and eThekwini Municipality until that right was respected. No one in our country should have to think twice before walking into a shul.  

Our council also marked Yom HaShoah alongside Holocaust survivor Wanda Albinska, whose harrowing testimony of the Warsaw Ghetto reminded us of the power of memory against forgetting.   

None of these achievements happened by accident. It required us to  keep showing up, again and again, at tables where a Jewish voice was not guaranteed an ear. The world does not distinguish between Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban. It sees one South African Jewry. When we showed up credibly for KwaZulu-Natal, the whole country’s Jewish community was taken more seriously. 

We also did not do this work alone. We had the tireless support of the SAJBD national office and Cape Council of the SAJBD; generous community donors and affiliate organisations; and, of course, our executive committee and professional staff.  

When I first addressed my community as president, I told the story of the sage Choni HaMe’agel, who found an old man planting a carob tree that would take 70 years to bear fruit. “I was born into a world filled with carob trees,” the man said. “Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I plant for my descendants.” 

That is what these 14 months have been. Planting.  

Rabbi Tarfon taught that it is not upon us to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it.  

That, for me, is the essence of Jewish continuity. No president finishes this work. Indeed, no generation does. We inherit it from those who came before us; we each do our part with faith, courage, and humility, and then we place it in good hands and trust those who come after us to carry it further. 

May we continue to be a bridge and a voice, a shield, and a light, and may Jewish KwaZulu-Natal keep showing the country and the world what it looks like to plant trees whose shade we may never sit in ourselves. 

Alana Pugh-Jones Baranov is the outgoing president of the SAJBD KwaZulu-Natal Council and the country director of HIAS South Africa. This is an extract from her president’s address at the 92nd AGM of the SAJBD KZN Council.