ja chank 2008 - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

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her family and working (she was a high school teacher for a time at Forest High and after 1976 a lecturer on world religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Wits), Hellig continued to study at Wits, completing Biblical and Religious Studies I, II and III. In 1982, she obtained her Ph.D. for her thesis “The Death of G-d” in the thought of Richard L. Rubenstein”. In 1992 and again in 1995-8, she was Head of the Department of Religious Studies, afterwards becoming an Honorary Research Fellow. Jocelyn was a prolific writer, contributing numerous academic articles and chapters in books to a wide range of scholarly publications on such themes as Jewish religious expression in Africa, antisemitism and the Holocaust and comparative religion. She also wrote extensively for both the Jewish and general media on these and other relevant topics. Her critically acclaimed book The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism: A Short History (One World, Oxford) appeared in 2003. Aleck Goldberg Aleck Goldberg, who passed away just after Succot at the age of 85, was a much loved and respected Jewish communal leader. A true scholar and gentleman, he epitomised the dedication and professionalism that characterised a now vanished era of Jewish communal service in South Africa. Goldberg served on the staff of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies from 1958 until his retirement in 1990, for the last ten years as Executive Director. He was also a prolific writer on South African Jewish themes, regularly contributing to Jewish Affairs and other local Jewish publications. Aleck’s long career at the SAJBD commenced with his appointment as Secretary of its Public Relations Committee. Part of his brief in the early years was to monitor the press, both English and Afrikaans, and prepare summaries of items of Jewish interest. These enabled the leadership of the Board to assess levels of anti-Jewish sentiment. Over the years, he created a special niche for himself within the Board as its country communities ‘ambassador’, making frequent visits to the country districts to update the small platteland Jewish communities regarding the work of the Board and the situation in the country as a whole. He also took particular pleasure in the cultural and educational aspects of the Board’s work, and was involved in arranging numerous events in this field, including lectures and exhibitions. The most pressing issue facing the Board during the years when Aleck was Executive Director was that of apartheid and how the Board, as the representative political voice of the community, should respond to it. As he put it later, the Board was forced to walk a tightrope, caught between its duty to protect the Jewish community and the moral imperative to condemn a policy that was contrary to the ethics of Judaism. Shortly after his retirement, Goldberg joined the editorial board of Jewish Tradition. His book Portrait of a Community: South African Jewry, drawn from his own intimate experience and knowledge of the local Jewish community, was published through the Rabbi Aloy Foundation Trust in 2002. Aleck Goldberg was born to Leib and Malka Goldberg in Ermelo, in the then Eastern Transvaal, in 1923. He matriculated at Ermelo High School before moving to Johannesburg, where he obtained a B.A. from Wits and a teacher’s diploma from the
Johannesburg College of Education. Thereafter, he held a number of high school teaching posts, including at Parktown Boys, Highlands North, Krugersdorp, Athlone and King David (where he was the first male teacher ever appointed). He also taught briefly in London. In 1955, he married Musa Katz, and the couple had two sons and a daughter. Schneir Levin Dr. Schneir Levin, who passed away in Johannesburg on Yom Kippur at the age of 83, was a much beloved paediatrician who will be fondly remembered by several generations of parents whose children he tended with his expertise and trademark generosity. Less well known to the general public was the fact that he was also a redoubtable Judaic scholar, whose characteristically original, probing monographs on innumerable aspects on Jewish religion, literature, genealogy, folklore, history and language appeared in Jewish periodicals, newspapers and magazines throughout the world over more than four decades. He was a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs for decades; his last contribution appeared in the Rosh Hashanah 2007 issue. Schneir Levin was born in Posvel (Pasvalys), Lithuania, in 1925 and came to South Africa with his mother, Hana Rivel, brother Chaim and sister Esther in 1932; his father, Simcha, had preceded the family by three years. He grew up in the then heavily Jewish suburb of Bertrams, and qualified as a paediatrician at the University of the Witwatersrand. While he looked after several generations of children, many of them from the Jewish community, he himself never married. He was a stalwart member of the Berea shul until its eventual closure and, despite ill health in his final years, continued to write regularly for Jewish and other publications. The origins of popular Jewish surnames, the ‘Jewish’ character of Superman, Biblical resonances in modern-day agricultural practices in the West Bank and exactly what was the Forbidden Fruit in the Genesis story were just a sample of the multiple byways into which Levin’s provocative, if sometimes eccentric, scholarship led him. Apart from Jewish Affairs, amongst the publications in which his work regularly appeared over the years were Jewish Affairs, Biblical Polemics, Midstream, Judaism and Jewish Bible Quarterly. For Biblical Polemics alone, he contributed more than a hundred articles. All this was in addition to his frequent contributions to the Jewish press. Levin also found time to write on a range of scientific and medical topics, whether for serious publications as the SA Medical Journal or for more off-beat, tongue-in-cheek periodicals as the Journal of Irreproducible Results and Annals of Improbable Research.
Page 3: OBITUARIES Shortly before going to
Page 7 and 8: To put the matter into proper persp
Page 9 and 10: Eden did not say that the Jews had
Page 11 and 12: have been humane and far-sighted”
Page 13 and 14: As is evident from the Rosenman col
Page 15 and 16: where the mean high temperature in
Page 17 and 18: Auschwitz book, p322 for example, t
Page 19 and 20: Was this a problem solved or a prob
Page 21 and 22: them, his brothers held him fast so
Page 23 and 24: prevalent. 58 The subsequent 1902 a
Page 25 and 26: associated with darkness and dampne
Page 27 and 28: and rebuilt. 82 Those living in the
Page 29 and 30: stories overheard as I walk, everyb
Page 31 and 32: from every part of the Continent, c
Page 33 and 34: perform those practices one chooses
Page 35 and 36: invoke absent health benefits in fe
Page 37 and 38: of circumciser to women but not usi
Page 39 and 40: If the above facts are accepted, an
Page 41 and 42: salesmen, butchers and bakers. From
Page 43 and 44: surviving children, Clarrice Jeanet
Page 45 and 46: These days, a Jewish left wing acti
Page 47 and 48: While still a member of the Hashome
Page 49 and 50: ostracized Jewish victims of bannin
Page 51 and 52: One could add several more expressi
Page 53 and 54: SOME JEWISH BOOKSELLERS AND BOOKSHO
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Wendy Levitt, the present Manager o
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usiness. In 2000, Hyman expressed p
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this. Please accept this record of
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