Didn’t know of 4.5m shark lurking

ANT KATZ
Rabbi Greg Alexander of the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation was in Camps Bay during chol ha-moeid with his brother’s family who were down from Joburg when a pod of dolphins turned up.

“They had swum into the bay and were jumping and cavorting in the waves,” Rabbi Alexander told SAJR Online. “It was a first for me.”

Two surfers paddled out to the dolphins while everyone else was on the beach watched and took photos.

“I decided that these things don’t happen twice in one’s life,” said Alexander afterwards, “so dived into the freezing water and swam out to the dolphins.  It was amazing. There were at least 30 of them, just swimming around me, under me, next to me.

“They seemed curious about the surfers or me as they kept on coming back to us,” he told SAJR. “It was an amazing moment, being in the middle of Camps Bay with these beautiful creatures flashing past in the water.”

RIGHT: Rabbi Alexander
cavorted with the dolphins,
blissfully unaware that a
4.5m Great White shark
was lurking in the area

“I said the brachah ‘she’kacha lo b’olamo’ (Blessed is the One who has such creatures in the world) and, after spending as much time with the dolphins as I could (I really began to go numb), I swam back to the shore.”

Rabbi Alexander wondered why nobody else was getting in the water. It was only when he returned to the that one of the surfers told him that on the weekend there had been a shark scare causing the NSRI to clear the sea after the sighting of a 4.5m Great White!

“It made my swim even more miraculous and a Pesach that I will never forget,” said Rabbi Alexander afterwards.