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2 HASHALOM November
2016
November 2016
HASHALOM
3
THE GLOBAL JEWISH FAMILY
MOURNS SHIMON PERES
Prof Antony Arkin
EDITORIAL
The whole Jewish world bowed its head in sorrow upon hearing that
Shimon Peres had died last month, aged 93. Israel’s former president
and prime minister had succumbed to the stroke that hit him two
weeks earlier. Peres was more than just a former politician and leader.
He was the country’s elder statesman and the last of the state’s
founding generation. His death symbolises the end of an era.
In his 93 years Peres was at every major juncture that Israel went
through in 68 years of statehood. He came to Palestine from a village
in what is now Belarus when he was 12. His remaining family was
burned to death by the Nazis in the local synagogue. He became a
young kibbutznik, and then the aide to the founding father David Ben
Gurion, who relied on Peres to build Israel’s military establishment.
Peres did not fight in the trenches in Israel’s War of Independence.
Rather he scoured the world for arms. Later, he helped found Israel’s
aircraft industry. Using torturous methods, because no one would sell
weapons to Israel openly, he snapped up tanks, aircraft, torpedo boats
and spare parts. He opened the doors for Israel to the French arms
industry in the 1950’s. This was followed by an even more spectacular
and secret achievement, the creation of the Israeli nuclear reactor
in Dimona. For Peres the nuclear deterrent was essential in a region
where all of Israel’s neighbours rejected its right to exist.
He became a Knesset member, Minister of Defence, Foreign Affairs,
Transportation, Communications, Immigrant Absorption, Information
and Finance. He was twice prime minister, and at the end, the nation’s
president. Through a career that spanned this tumultuous period he
never abandoned the hope that Israel would eventually live in peace.
Mr Peres was a security hawk at a time when Israel’s enemies were
its Arab neighbours. The dynamic changed however after Israel made
peace with Egypt in the Camp David Accords in 1979. When the first
Intifada broke out in 1987, Mr Peres argued that while the Palestinians
were not an existential threat, Israel would never live in peace without
settling with them. In 1993 back-channel negotiations with the
Palestinian Liberation Organization led to the Oslo Accords, offering
the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It was a crowning triumph for Mr Peres, for which he was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize along with General Rabin and Chairman Yasser
Arafat in 1994.
He had high hopes for Oslo, but he always sought to build in hedges in
case the Palestinians failed to fulfill their side of the bargain. President
Peres also criticised those Israelis who were too hesitant to take
risks for peace. Their hesitancy threatened Israel’s future as a Jewish,
democratic state.
As he grew older, President Peres spent more time involved with
diplomacy, economic development and scientific progress. While
serving as president, he held an annual conference that brought
leaders in every field from around the globe for dialogue and
discussion. It showcased, to the world, that Israel was on the cutting
edge of advances in health, agriculture, and in digital technologies and
innovation.
More than 80 world leaders gathered in Jerusalem for the funeral of
Shimon Peres. He, in the words of President Obama, “changed the
course of human history”. We join in mourning the passing of Shimon
Peres, visionary world statesman, peace activist and inspirational
founding father of the state of Israel.
Contact: Robyn Bradley P.O. Box 10797 Marine Parade 4056
Production Manager: Mrs Robyn Bradley
The views expressed in the pages of Hashalom are not necessarily those of the
Editorial Board or any other organisation or religious body unless otherwise
individual.
Hashalom Editorial Board:
Editor: Prof Antony Arkin
Sub Editor: Colin Plen
Editorial Board: Mrs Mikki Norton, Mrs Michelle Shapira
Commitee: Dr Issy Fisher, Ms Diane McColl, Mrs Lauren Shapiro, Mr Colin Plen
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Editoria
l
0
2
Out of Perspective
03
Mishna Impossible
04
Israel
05
Analysis: Conflicting messages from the Peres funeral
05
Former Archbishop of Canterbury among critics of church’s 06
Israel ‘checkpoint’
UNESCO Director-General criticizes ‘harmful’ drive to
07
erase Jewish ties to Temple Mount
Israeli researcher use spinach leaves to generate clean fuel 08
Sukkat Shalom - A Tabernacle of Peace A Beit Ha’am
09
Anthology in memory of Shimon Peres
Jewish World
12
Huge, Inquisition-era Torah scroll found in Portugal
12
The probable origins of some Durban Jewish names
15
Community New
s
13
Bubkes
13
Past Tense
14
South African Ex-Service League
16
SAJBD
17
KwaZulu Natal Zionist Council
18
Wotsup Wizo
19
Durban United Hebrew Congregation
20
Limmud
21
Durban Holocaust Centre
22
Divote
23
Beth Shalom
24
Eden College
25
Umhlanga Jewish Centre
26
Akiva College
27
Durban Progressive Jewish Congregation
28
Hebrew Order of David
29
Talmud Torah
29
Young Israel Centre
29
Union of Jewish Women
30
Above Board
31
Cooking with Judy and Linda
31
Social and Personal
32
Diary of Events
32
On our Cover
32
OUT OF PERSPECTIVE
A caveat before reading on: this article will be short on substance,
but attempt to be long on humour.
Now, one of the big differences between shuls in Israel and in
the far-flung communities of the Diaspora is the size and nature
of the building. Basically, in the Diaspora, the shul is the centre
of Jewish communal life: prayer, study, lifecycle events and
communal functions. Shuls are equipped with kitchen and dining
room facilities, and many are big compounds also including
schools. In Israel, the shul is a bit different. You go there to pray
and maybe if you are studious, also to the odd shiur. That is all.
Except for taxi drivers maybe? A taxi driver in Modi’in once told
me that he knew the location of every shul in the city, because
they were the only buildings open early in the morning with toilet
facilities. But I digress, even though local taxi drivers are well-
known to be Professors of Life. My point is that there is little need
for grandiose Jewish communal centres in the Jewish homeland.
Anyway, there is little space for them (local municipalities are able
to allocate a finite space for religious institutions in cities) and
they are expensive to maintain. In fact, many shul congregations
choose to pray in nursery school or schools, because they are
readily available and always closed on shabbatot and chaggim.
They can be easily converted with plastic chairs, wheeling out a
mobile Aron Kodesh, and placing some Sifrei Torah locked away
in a safe on site into the Aron. This is carried out in probably
thousands of schools around the country every week. Presto!
Just add ten men and you are ready to go.
The problem arises after shul. Jewish DNA is the same
everywhere, and we need to eat and drink i.e. have a Kiddush.
The problem is actually split into two: firstly, there is usually no
regular group of people organising it, and secondly, there are
limited facilities to refrigerate and heat food, and obviously
limited facilities to sit and enjoy the food. So whilst I did enjoy
a good Kiddush back home in the mother-land, when it comes
to participating/attending a Kiddush in a local neighbourhood
shul in my adopted-land, I become a grouch. I could probably
write a book on this, but let me outline my main gripes: in the
age of social media, crowd-funding a Kiddush on a google docs
sheet is the preferred method. Thanks to social media, anyone
may create an online excel spreadsheet, write a whole-bunch
of dishes and drinks required in one column, circulate the list
via a Whatsapp group, and the recipients of the message simply
choose an item and fill their name in the adjacent column. It’s
the great BYO model (Bring Your Own) perfected by hi-tech. My
regular shabbat-morning minyan has perfected this, though to be
accurate, the kugel is purchased on a centrally-allocated budget.
The benefits of social media are obviously boundless. Sometimes
there is a single sponsor or perhaps a couple of families that club
together to sponsor a Kiddush out of their pocket, and there is
no need for annoying last-minute Friday shopping to BYO the
next day. However, there is still no magical App that that will
organise enough hot plates and timers, urns for hot water, and
set out folded table for the holy congregation. There is also no
App to collect the associated rubbish, and most certainly no App
to clean the facilities afterwards so school opens as per normal
the following Sunday morning.
But the real source of my grouchiness is this: all the children
(loosely defined as anyone aged 2 to 82) are waiting with bated-
breath for Kiddush Rabbah to be intoned, and are standing
around the tables, paper plates in hand, ready to attack the food
as if they haven’t eaten anything since breakfast a couple of
hours earlier. This means I need to get stuck in there to make
sure my children get their piece of kugel, spoonful of pasta, slice
of quiche or cake before it’s finished. I have learnt to dispel any
qualms or concerns for any other child as this is the survival of
the Kiddush-fittest. Then comes finding a place to sit, usually
balancing the plate on another chair or knees. By which time,
after I have enquired if everything is alright and according to
satisfaction, I usually get asked politely to bring a drink. And so
I return to the fracas… Needless to say by the time I myself find
something small to eat I have lost my appetite.
Personally (and I admit I am probably not representative of
the majority opinion), I find the whole manner of the communal
Kiddush process here in Israel not particularly respectful in
honouring the Shabbat. I prefer to sit down in peace at a table,
and eat my cake with a real spoon off a real plate. If this is not
possible, at least to be able to sit down and not be bothered by
my kids, while I eat off a paper plate. Tellingly, my spouse calls
me just plain anti-social, with no reason to gripe or be a grouch.
I realise I am obviously in the minority because judging by
reactions on social media in the week leading up, or my children’s
reaction when I tell them there will be a Kiddush on Shabbat, the
excitement cannot be contained. I haven’t mentioned a word yet
about whisky clubs, but this subject should probably be broached
in a separate article.
The Kiddush Grouch
Prof Antony Arkin
David Arkin