When 38 year old former Herzlian and specialist scenic artist Elaine Seidel got a call from a French production designer asking if she would work on a World War II movie with a ‘Jewish angle’, she said yes immediately. When she learned it was to be filmed in Lithuania and directed by ‘Blood Diamond’ and ‘The Last Samurai’ director, Ed Zwick, it was a done deal.

The designer explained that the movie was about the Bielski partisans ‘in the forest’, who hid Jews and saved them from the Nazis. Elaine began to research and the enormity of the story began to sink in, as did the scope of the personal and professional adventure she was about to embark on from August to December 2007.

The movie was ‘Defiance’, now showing in South Africa, starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell as the three Bielski brothers who, with a group of partisans from 1942 until the end of the war, managed to establish a community of 1200 Jews in the forests of western Belorussia, saving them from almost certain death.

Avron Kaplan with ‘Q and A’ author Vikas Swarup and his wife Aparna.

Since establishing his ‘Living Newspaper’ in June 1987 Avron Kaplan has single-mindedly, passionately and doggedly ‘rounded up’ strings of press-worthy personalities to present their views, arguments and achievement histories for Cape Town audiences.

His latest coup just a month ago was Vikas Swarup, the Indian Deputy High Commissioner to South Africa and author of the award-winning book ‘Q and A’, upon which the Oscar grabbing movie ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ was based.

While he has had some tough experiences in procuring his ‘targets’ over the years, Avron’s battle to get Vikas Swarup to the Albow Centre on a Sunday afternoon in May was possibly the most nerve-wracking of all, he says.

Teri Jedeikin (TISA co-ordinator), Dean Sandler, Anne Marx (Jewish Community Services Social Work Manager), Rabbi Greg Alexander, Roy Fine, Eric Beswick (Executive Director, Temple Israel) at the presentation of the cheque to Jewish Community Services.

In one of our most successful fundraisers ever, the inaugural Temple Israel Tachlis Hold ‘Em Casino Evening was held at the BMW Auto Atlantic showroom in Cape Town on 23 May.

Members of the Herzlia Africa Society stand with BOD and community members.

“Tonight we reflect on the suffering of the many refugees and others from foreign lands whose dignity has been impaired, whose lives have been thrown into turmoil, and who have suffered mentally and physically, who have been mistreated because they are seen as ‘strangers’ from other lands.”

This was part of the message given by Owen Futeran, speaking on behalf of the Jewish community at a vigil held outside Parliament on Thursday 21 May, organised by the Social Justice Coalition.

The Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town is about to embark on a new Oral History Project, building on an earlier project which was carried out nearly thirty years ago.

At that time the focus was on life histories of elderly Jewish men and women who had grown up in South Africa or at least came to South Africa as children. About 300 interviews were conducted in the early 1980s by a team of interviewers.

These valuable memoirs were transcribed and archived. Subsequently the interviews have been used by scholars in the reconstruction of the South African Jewish past.

According to Professor Milton Shain, director of the Kaplan Centre, the new project will focus on Jewish leaders. The emphasis will be on the ways in which Jewish leaders entered into communal life, the burning issues they dealt with and the changing priorities. Interviews will be led by Lauren Snitcher.

Standard bearer SAJEX Captain Howard Shagom stands in front of the 1500 Capetonians who turned out to commemorate Yom Ha Shoah this year.

As Owen Futeran, Board of Deputies (Cape Council) chairman, reminded the 1500-strong crowd at Pinelands Cemetery on Yom Hashoah Vehagevurah, there is, in Judaism, a sacred duty to remember the souls of the departed. According to British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the act of remembering is one of our most important halachic responses to tragedy and to live in a way so that those who died “al kiddush Hashem” live with us and carry us forward.