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20 SA JEWISH REPORT SUZANNE BELLING The Jewish community is deeply saddened by the loss of Gerald Kleinman (pictured), who, even as an octogenarian, worked regularly in his office at the Cape Town Jewish Community Centre, which he still maintained till the time of his passing, aged 92, earlier this week. Up until a few months before his death, Kleinman, the oldest Jewish communal professional in South Africa, took his daily constitutional at 06:00 on the Sea Point beachfront and then put in a good few hours work in the office. The epitome of a distinguished gentleman, with a head of thick hair - only slightly greying in his latter years, he had the energy of a man half his age. He was friend, adviser and confidante to Jewish communal professionals, with the unusual criterion of having the ear of the lay leadership. Kleinman, an honorary life vice-president of the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies, saw both sides of organisational Jewish life, including as a past chairman of the Board, chairman of Weizmann Primary School, chairman and vice-president of the UCF to executive director of IUA-UCF-Welfare, director of the United Jewish Campaign, top donors convener of the IUA-UCF- Welfare and latterly concentrated on wills and bequests. Despite the usual amount of infighting within Jewish organisations, Kleinman was peacemaker in several internecine battles! Kleinman entered his profession by default. Formerly a businessman in the shoe industry - he “stupidly” went to an AGM of Weizmann School (now Herzlia Weizmann) and became a vociferous critic. “How do you silence, someone like that? You put them on the committee and give them a job to do, which is exactly what happened. I said okay, as long as it didn’t involve fundraising and ended up as treasurer,” he said in a recent interview. “I then became chairman, after they confessed they didn’t have anyone else, though they expressed doubts about my ability to do the job. I had to prove them wrong!” From then onwards, his communal involvement, especially fundraising, snowballed and he found himself chairman of the UCF, before it merged with the IUA. He was chairman of the Cape Committee of the SAJBD from 1973 to 1975, chairman of the Country Communities committee, chairman of the Religious Instruction Committee, a member of the Western Province Jewish Priorities Board, a trustee of the Hebrew Teachers’ Pension Fund, a member of the Herzlia executive, as well as presiding over the Wellington Rotary Club. Kleinman was a director of M Kleinman and Company, a director of Panther Shoe Obituary Community stalwart Gerald Kleinman passes on Company Ltd, managing director of S Rossiter and Company (Pty) Ltd and a council member of the SA Footwear Manufacturers’ Federation. He commuted for 14 years, sometimes twice daily, from his shoe factory in Wellington (about a 45-minute drive from Cape Town) to attend meetings. When China created problems for the local shoe industry, Kleinman changed career course and became a Jewish professional, starting with linking the separate IUA and UCF campaigns as executive director in 1986. Welfare joined it in 1993. He remained active in Rotary as president of the Signal Hill Rotary Club and was a recipient of the prestigious Paul Harris Award and Paul Harris Saphire award, the Keren Hayesod Kreutner award and the Eric Samson/Mendel Kaplan award from the BOD. He was also recipient of the annual Eliot Osrin Award (in the category of community leadership) from Jewish Care (Cape). Kleinman was instrumental in many major decisions of the 18 – 25 November 2016 Cape Town community, including the move to create the CTJCC in the Gardens. He was married to Rene for 69 years and leaves her and his children, Jeffrey, Moritz, Simone Scherzer and Marilyn Dubovsky, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. He was buried at Pinelands Jewish Cemetery on Tuesday. Sweet song of success beginning to ring in Yael’s ears PETER FELDMAN Yael, a Johannesburg mother of two, has turned her singing hobby into a bold career move by recording her debut album, called “Fly Away”. Yael (who for professional reasons only uses her first name) feels if she doesn’t do it now she will never do it - and under the guiding light of renowned theatre impresario Richard Loring she is beginning to create waves. Yael, who attended Yeshiva College and Crawford College, never took her hobby of 20 years seriously until a few years ago when she met Loring who saw star potential in her and wanted to develop it further. She told Jewish Report: “The amount of hours, commitment and energy I gave to my hobby was not good enough because I now had to make a serious decision about turning a hobby into a career. I consulted with my husband and my parents and they said I must go ahead and realise my dream “I had been working as a marketing analyst but I Arts grew bored with the job. I loved singing and performed at various charity events and gave the odd performance. I made up my mind to place my singing on a more professional basis three years ago, believing I really had nothing to lose. I started on this journey without real direction. I just wanted to record an album, that was my aim. It’s been an enormous learning curve along the way.” A family friend, PR veteran Melanie Millin- Moore, who had never heard Yael sing, introduced her to Richard Loring. The rest is history. Yael’s husband David, and her children Naomi (7) and Gabriel (5), are her biggest fans but once her album is released the fan base is bound to grow. “Fly Away’’ produced by Loring and record industry veteran John Lindeman, is recorded with the Soweto Spiritual Singers. They are featured on five numbers. “It’s been a true labour of love,” says Yael, “and I love so much working with these professionals.” Yael, speaks several languages, including French and Hebrew, and can sing in eight. On the album, which she describes as a crossover work that embraces contemporary songs and light classics, she sings in Zulu, English and Spanish. “I am a classically trained singer and the numbers were carefully chosen.” The big track on the album is the universal hit Eres Tu (Touch the Wind) which was a massive hit in the 70s for Spanish artists Mocedades. It was originally done in Spanish but Yael sings it in Zulu (with the Soweto Spiritual Singers) and in English. The message of the song is universal and is about unity. Another popular track is the evergreen South African hit, Paradise Road, but done with Yael’s unique touch and again with the soaring sounds of the 12-strong Soweto Spiritual Singers. The launch of Yael’s album took place last Sunday at a new venue, O12 Central, in the heart of Pretoria. Accompanied by the Soweto Spiritual Singers on several tracks, she gave a striking onehour performance. If the positive reaction from the guests was anything to go by, it seems Yael’s destined for a bright future in music. Sunday (November 20) What’s On • RCHCC rescreens the documentary “In Search of Beethoven”, with over 60 live performances. Venue: Clive M Beck Auditorium. Time: 19:30. Donation: R70 (incl refreshments). Booking: Hazel or René (011) 728-8088/8378, a/h (011) 728-8378 or e-mail: rchcc@telkomsa.net or rene.s@telkomsa.net • Followers of light music (not classical or pop) should come to the Roosevelt Park Recreational Centre for two great audio presentations, followed by a short refreshment interval at R20 pp (optional) then into a musical audio/video. Time: 14:00. First-timers free. Information: David (011) 678-972 or 076-574-1446. • Jewish Genealogical Society of SA hosts Dr Jack Mink on “Jewish Composers of the Tin Pan Alley Era”. He will play music of this golden age of Hollywood and Broadway. Venue: HOD. Time: 19:30. Cost: R25 (incl tea and refreshments). RSVP: Hannah (011) 485-2188. • JJAC invites Jewish singles aged 27 - 49 to the “Braamfontein Spruit Hike”. E-mail whatson@jjac.co.za for details. • Second Innings hosts Helen Heldenmuth on “Travels and Laughter with my Yiddish Soul”. Venue: Gerald Horwitz Lounge, Golden Acres. Time: 10:00 for 10:30. Cost: R20 members, R40 visitors (incl tea and light refreshments). Contact: Linda Fleishman (011) 532-9701. Monday (November 21) • UJW Adult Education Division hosts urban planner Lael Bethlehem on “Johannesburg - Decay and Renewal in the Inner City”. Venue: 1 Oak Street, Houghton. Time: 09:30. Donation: R40. Contact: UJW (011) 648-1053. Wednesday (November 23) • UJW Adult Education Division hosts Dr Lorraine Chaskalson, formerly from Department of English, Wits on “The Written Word Leaps Off the Page”. Venue: 1 Oak Street, Houghton. Time: 09:30. Donation: R40. Contact: UJW (011) 648-1053. Thursday (November 24) • JH&GC in partnership with the Lithuanian embassy stages a temporary exhibition “The Sounds of Silence - Traces of Jewish Life in Lithuania”. Keynote presentation by Howard Sackstein, chairman of the SA Jewish Report board of directors. Venue: Holocaust Centre, Forest Town. Time: 18:30 for 19:00. Booking is essential with shirley@jhbholocaust.co.za or (011) 640-3100. • Desert Rose Productions, an English-language theatre production company in Israel, is bringing its acclaimed comedy, “Together, Against the Odds” to South Africa. Venue: Indaba Hotel, Fourways. Time: 20:00. Cost: R180 pp (early bird) or R200, from Webtickets http://bit.ly.2drkhPJ. Friday (November 25) • Shalom Masorti Seniors Club have some light-hearted fun on the last Friday of each month. Tea is served and there is a selection of board games to play, cards etc. Maurice Resnik will today speak on “The Golden Years” and “Learning Life’s Lessons”. Information: Esther (011) 485-5619 Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday mornings. south african Jewish Report Please support our advertisers
18 – 25 November 2016 News SA JEWISH REPORT 21 Iconic songwriter, singer Leonard Cohen dies at age 82 RON KAMPEAS LOS ANGELES Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer songwriter whose Jewish-infused work became a soundtrack for melancholy, has died. He was 82. “It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away,” his Facebook page said late last Thursday. “We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries.” It did not give a cause of death, but said there would be a funeral in Los Angeles in coming days. Cohen, born in 1934 in Montreal, was playing folk guitar by the time he was 15, when he learned the resistance song, “The Partisan”, working at a camp, from an older friend. “We sang together every morning, going through The People’s Song Book from cover to cover,” he recalled in his first “Best Of” compilation in 1975. “I developed the curious notion that the Nazis were overthrown by music.” As a student at McGill University, he became part of Montreal’s burgeoning alternative art scene, one bursting with nervous energy at a time that tensions between Quebec’s French and English speakers were coming to the fore. His influences included Irving Layton, the seminal Canadian Jewish poet who taught at McGill, and like Cohen, grappled with the tensions between the secular world and the temptations of faith. He began to publish poetry and then novels, and was noticed by the national Canadian press. Moving to New York in the late 1960s (his song, “Chelsea Hotel”, is about his stay and that notorious refuge for the inspired, the insane and the indigent), he began to put his words to music. “Suzanne”, about the devastating platonic affair with a friend’s wife that was a factor in his leaving Montreal, was recorded by Judy Collins and became a hit; his career was launched. Cohen sang in his limited bass, and wrote his songs so he could sing them; they would have been dirges but for their surprising lyrical turns and their reckoning with joy in unexpected places. In “Bird on the Wire”, one of his most covered songs, he recovers from a crippling guilt when he finds inspiration in a beggar, and then in a prostitute: “And a pretty woman, leaning in her darkened door/ She cried to me, ‘Hey why not ask for more’.” Cohen embraced Buddhism, but never stopped saying he was Jewish. His music more often than not dealt directly not just with his faith, but with his Jewish people’s story. His most famous song, covered hundreds of times, is “Hallelujah” - he has said its unpublished verses are endless, but in its recorded version, it is about the sacred anguish felt by King David as he contemplates the beauty of the forbidden Bathsheba. Cohen’s version, released in 1984, did well in Europe (in a video on German TV he is backed by a children’s choir hiding behind a faux Greek set). John Cale recorded a piano-driven version for a Cohen tribute album in 1991. Jeff Buckley heard that version, and used it as the basis for his own six-minute cover, reinterpreting on his guitar the arpeggios Cale had used to accompany the song. Running longer than six minutes, Buckley’s version became in the late 1990s the go-to song for extended TV show montages depicting trauma and melancholy. Cale’s version was used in “Shrek” in 2001, and that did it: The song became inevitable. “First We Take Manhattan”, recorded in the late 1980s when Cohen was living much of his time in Europe, plumbs the anger of a modern Jew travelling through a post-war consumerist Europe that has become adept at ignoring its Jewish ghosts: I love your body and your spirit and your clothes But you see that line there moving through the station? I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those. Cohen was droll, but also reverent: Each of his explanations of his songs on 1975’s “Best Of” is sardonic except Leonard Cohen in concert at London’s O2 Arena on September 15, 2013. for one, for “Who by Fire”: “This is based on a prayer recited on the Day of Atonement,” was all he wrote. Cohen, in his 70s in the late 2000s, began once again to tour and record; a manager had bilked him of much of his fortune. He released his final album, “You Want It Darker”, last month. He often toured Israel, and he expressed his love for the country - he toured for troops in the 1973 Yom Kippur War - but he also expressed sadness at the militarism he encountered there. Under pressure from the boycott Israel movement to cancel a 2009 concert, he instead donated its (much needed by him) proceeds to a group that advances dialogue between Palestinians and Jews. Photo: Brian Rasic/Getty Images Tickets to the stadium at Ramat Gan sold out in minutes. His Israeli fans embraced him that September night, and he returned the love, sprinkling the concert with Hebrew and readings from scripture and ending it with the blessing of the Cohens. In August he wrote an emotional letter to his former girlfriend and muse Marianne Ihlen, who died in late July, suggesting he too was ready to embrace his death. Last month, in a profile of Cohen in The New Yorker, Bob Dylan compared his fellow singer-songwriter to Irving Berlin - linking three iconic Jewish musicians in one poignant assessment. Cohen is survived by a son and a daughter. (JTA) Above Board Jeff Katz National Chairman If you were to ask our National Director, Wendy Kahn, which aspects of the Board’s work are the most complex, time-consuming and stressful, there is no doubt that resolving problems of university exams set on Shabbat or Yomtov would rank high on the list. Whether timetable clashes involve many religiously observant Jewish students or even a single individual, the Board will exert itself to the utmost in order to come to an acceptable alternative arrangement with the university concerned. That we have in the vast majority of cases to date been successful in this regard has in large part been due to the absolute dedication with which Wendy has devoted herself to such cases. It can truly be said of her that she feels a personal obligation to help each and every individual and that she will not rest until every door has been knocked on and every possible option pursued. For this, innumerable Jewish students, and indeed the entire community, owe her a particular debt of gratitude. A second area in which the Board has become involved, is in assisting Jewish medical students wishing to be placed in reasonable proximity to a Jewish community when doing their postgraduation year of community service. Students accept that they will be placed in areas where their skills are most needed, but wherever possible we assist them in obtaining posts not too far removed from one or other Community Column A column of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies Working for our students centre where there exists an organised Jewish presence. Once again, Wendy has taken this particular task on her shoulders. As in previous columns, I would like to reiterate the need for students who require our assistance in these or any other such areas, to contact the Board as timeously as possible on (011) 645-2521/ sajbd@sajbd.org Welcome to our new Cape director Last month, the SAJBD – Cape Council appointed Joshua Hovsha as its new executive director. Joshua has very much hit the ground running, and we have already had the opportunity of working with him on issues of national concern. I wish him all success in his new position, while knowing that he has an excellent team of lay leaders and professionals to back him up. The Cape Council can look back on another successful year, despite having to deal with various complex challenges. The latter included having to address the sensitive question of women singing solo at Yom Hashoah, and here, thankfully, it was possible to come to a mutually acceptable solution for all concerned. As in previous years, the Council continued to be active in the interfaith arena and broader social outreach, was much involved in making this year’s commemoration of 175th years of Jewish life in South Africa such a success and in general played a key role in fostering unity and co-operation within the Cape Town Jewish community. Kudos to all concerned, and especially to Cape Council chairman Eric Marx for his dedicated and hands-on leadership. • Listen to Charisse Zeifert on Jewish Board Talk, 101.9 ChaiFM every Friday 12:00 - 13:00 This column is paid for by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies A taste of Israel just OFF THE STRIP Come and see our range of Kosher Frozen Products DELI & FINE FOODS 17 Anne Street Sandringham Zoglos vegetarian products Burgers • Cutlets Hot Dogs • Nuggets Ice Lollies Cherry, Grape, Pineapple R 9.95 All Chillas R 25.00 Monday-Thursday 8am-6pm Friday 8am-3pm | Sunday 8am-3pm
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