It has been a week all about Israel in SA

Shalom Readers,

It was a very good week for the pro-Israel camp in South Africa as the now ubiquitous Israel Apartheid Week was considered a dismal failure with insufficient support for any events or activities. In contrast Israel Awareness Week was a great success. Supporters produced a colourful array of posters, social media messaging and graffiti walls on campuses and it culminated in well attended pro-Israel, solidarity rallies in both Cape Town and Johannesburg organised by DEISI and the SA Zionist Fed. Read

Also good news were the meetings held in Pretoria.between the SA director-general of the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, Ambassador Jerry Matjile and Ambassador Dore Gold, his counterpart from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, This was the highest level diplomatic meeting between the two countries in over a decade.

And in a move that shocked the Jewish establishment, the board of the SA Jewish Report announced the sale of the newspaper to the Gupta family. Chairman of the board of the paper, Howard Sackstein, said the Guptas felt the Jewish Report would fit perfectly into their stable of premium brand news outlets.

And in this issue Suzanne Belling talks to two Jewish community members who have the challenging role of counselling Jewish prisoners in the SA prison system. Read what they have to say.

This year represents the 175th year since the establishment of the first Jewish congregation in SA. Celebrations blasted off in Cape Town with a spectacular evening at City Hall. Israeli conductor Omri Hadari was in charge of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, also featuring Israeli pianist Aviram Reichert.

And we can be proud of an SA-born scientist, Neil Turok, who is the recipient of the 2016 John Torrence Tate Award for International Leadership in Physics from the American Institute of Physics. Turok had just returned from Dakar where he went ‘to support the call to meet the challenges of producing the next African Einstein’.ocus on the religious significance.

We wish you all a good weekend!

The Jewish Report team

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