Lukewarm response at SAZF conference saddening

Pam Stein

The programme itself was inspiring. Keynote speakers among others, included luminaries such as Avrom Krengel, Nir Barkat, mayor of Jerusalem, with strong South African ties and Irwin Cotler, Canadian MP, all of them inspiring and on par with Benjamin Netanyahu’s momentous speech to the US Congress. 

As with most other proud South African Jews, I was overwhelmed by the top tier professionalism of the entire evening’s events, the magnificent indigenous South African choral presentation (of which seemingly inadvertently, the name and details were omitted from the programme).

From 1966 to 1977, I held various high-level administrative positions in the secretariat of the SAZF, then still at 84 De Villiers Street, Johannesburg. On an IBM golf ball typewriter, I transcribed every speech of the opening nights of SAZF conferences – this in the times of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. I also transcribed the experiences, lives and history of Mahalniks in the 1948 War.

This preamble is a background to the opening night of the 48^th SAZF conference this year. As proud, inspired and emotional as I, among many, felt during the proceedings, I felt immeasurably disheartened at the comparatively lukewarm audience response to speakers at this scintillating event. 

Compared to Netanyahu’s speech, where the emotions and love of Israel evoked from that audience expressed itself in affirming and boisterous clapping, our keynote speakers, Avrom Krengel, Barkat and Cotler, among others, galvanised the audience with their humility, insight and love for Eretz Israel. But the applause was far from rousing. 

Inasmuch as the audience predominantly was of the “older generation” – more so having been witness to the miraculous history of Eretz Israel – it seemed to me as if the general audience were mostly mere spectators at a show.

Pam Stein   

Linksfield, Johannesburg