DESPITE a long and often vicious campaign to paint Barack Obama as anti-Israel, exit polls reveal that more than three quarters of American Jews voted Democratic. NBC television’s exit polls said 77% of Jews voted for Obama; 22% for John McCain CNN television’s exit polls said 78% of Jews voted for Obama; 21% for McCain […]
“Is medicine still a good job for a nice Jewish boy or girl?” THE newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Professor Max Price, will be giving the this year’s Rabbi Dr David Sherman lecture. The lecture, in memory of the much-loved Rabbi Sherman, who was the outspoken leader of Cape Town’s progressive […]
STEVE LURIE, chairman of the SA Union for Progressive Judaism, was silenced mid-way through a public speech in November in which he called for an end to discrimination against the Progressive youth movement Netzer at King David Schools.The incident unbottled long-simmering tensions over the treatment of Progressive Jews by the SA Jewish Board of Education, […]
Women were regularly present in the synagogue. One early rabbinic tradition speaks of a halachic ruling allowing a non-Jewish woman to help prepare the meal until the Jewish woman of the household returned from the synagogue (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 38a-b). Another mentions the right of women and minors to be included among the seven […]
THE Anita Saltz International Education centre in Jerusalem is an exciting, innovative initiative of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It offers many seminars and workshops, one of them being the Beutel Seminar for Progressive Jewish Leadership. I was privileged to be chosen by the South African Union for Progressive Judaism (SAUPJ) to represent South […]
PROGRESSIVE congregations around South Africa evaluated three different prayer books during 2008, and have chosen one – the US prayer book Mishkan T’Filah – which is to be adopted from December 2009, in a modified form customised for South Africa. The current prayer book, Gates of Prayer, is to be phased out after more than […]
As we approach Passover, the celebration of the Israelites’ liberation from tyranny and oppression, we the South African Progressive Jewish Community, are appalled that the government of South Africa has refused to grant His Holiness the Dalai Lama entry into our country to attend the 2010 World Cup-organised peace conference in Johannesburg. The government’s willingness […]
As members and supporters of the Jewish community, we affirm the democratic right of freedom of opinion, expression and association guaranteed to all citizens of the Republic of South Africa. Those rights allow us to declare publicly our support for the State of Israel whose foundations lie in our historic and religious connection to the […]
JUNE 4 From Netzer Staff: We have a week and a half to go for Etgar and Machon. The shnattim are doing fine and looking forward to their next part of Shnat- going to the cities! Machon enjoyed their peer- led week and Etgar enjoyed their Northern Tiyul in the Galilee and the Golan Heights. […]
MY TIME in Jerusalem was like an epiphany. I experienced, for a few hours, the lifestyle of an ultra Orthodox family. The choice my nephew and niece have made is not one I would contemplate but I respect their decision to live their lives the way that makes them happy. Although I do not understand […]