EEWISHW I S H J Rosh Hashanah A FFFAIRSFA I R S 2013 Price R50,00 incl. VAT Registered at the GPO as a Newspaper ISSN 0021 • 6313 Specialist Banking Asset Management Wealth & Investment INSIDE FRONT COVER FRONT INSIDE MISSION EDITORIAL BOARD In publishing JEWISH AFFAIRS, the SA EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jewish Board of Deputies aims to produce a cultural forum which caters for a wide David Saks SA Jewish Board of Deputies variety of interests in the community. The journal will be a vehicle for the publication of ACADEMIC ADVISORY BOARD articles of significant thought and opinion on Professor Marcus Arkin contemporary Jewish issues, and will aim to encourage constructive debate, in the form of Suzanne Belling reasoned and researched essays, on all matters Dr Louise Bethlehem Hebrew University of Jerusalem of Jewish and general interest. 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VOL. 68 NO. 2 ROSH HASHANAH 2013 Editor: David Saks SA JEWRY: CONTEMPORARY The Trial in Dubai: The Saga of Professor Cyril Karabus Michael Bagraim .........................................................................................................................................5 Contemporary Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Perspectives from the South African Experience David Saks .................................................................................................................................................12 Domestic Abuse – A Jewish View Matthew Liebenberg ..................................................................................................................................19 The Jewish Passion for Mandela Lana Jacobson ...........................................................................................................................................23 SA JEWRY: HISTORICAL Zionist Record Rosh Hashanah 1953: One Shilling and Sixpence Gwynne Schrire..........................................................................................................................................27 Johannesburg’s Mother Synagogue – 126 Years Young David Sher ..............................................................................................................................................34 Johannesburg’s Beth Hamedrash Hagodol and its Legacy Rose Norwich .............................................................................................................................................43 ESSAYS AND REFLECTIONS Mommy’s Story Riva Morgenstern.......................................................................................................................................48 The Ten Questions Charlotte Cohen .........................................................................................................................................51 BOOK REVIEWS The Accidental Ambassador: From Parliament to Patagonia Ralph Zulman .............................................................................................................................................54 A Quiet Kind of Courage Marcia Leveson..........................................................................................................................................55 What’s Left? Gary Selikow ..............................................................................................................................................56 READERS LETTERS Hazel Frankel, Cedric Ginsberg, David Lloyd Klepper .............................................................................57 THE TRIAL IN DUBAI: THE SAGA OF PROF CYRIL KARABUS * Michael Bagraim “Someone must have slandered Josef K., cell, told he was under arrest and spent the night for one morning, without having done sleeping on a steel bench in an adjoining room. anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” “We are keeping you because you are a murderer,” Franz Kafka, The Trial a customs official told him curtly. He was “totally bloody shocked” and bewildered, too. Cyril “The freeing of captives takes precedence Karabus, after all, is a highly respected doctor over feeding and clothing the poor” wrote the with an international reputation. He is a professor 12th Century sage Maimonides. Indeed, he wrote Emeritus of paediatrics at UCT and former head five letters to Jewish communities in Lower of the Oncology and Haematology unit at the Red Egypt asking them to pool money to ransom Cross Children’s Hospital. As a specialist in both Jews captured by a Christian king besieging an paediatrics and medical oncology, he had taught Egyptian town. Yet who would have expected a generation of medical students at Red Cross. that in the 21st Century, Jews would again have Devoted to caring for children with cancer, he to collect money to free a Jewish captive, one had spent almost his whole life saving young held in an autocratic Muslim country in defiance lives, although inevitably and heartbreakingly, of accepted rules of justice and human rights? nothing could be done in some cases. It took far more than five letters to free this Who would have thought that it would take nine particular captive. Twenty-four fat files of letters months, an international campaign, protests and and media reports, to be exact. support from a large number of people - Jewish, When I was first phoned at three in the morning Muslim and Christian - before we would be able on 18 August 2012 to learn that my wife’s cousin, to get him home? The best description of what he Prof Cyril Karabus, had been arrested in Dubai, went through can be found in Franz Kafka’s book, I thought it was probably a visa problem that I The Trial, about an innocent man arrested and could quickly fix up. His family were in shock and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority. highly traumatised, but being a positive person, It took days before we discovered that Prof I tried to calm them down, saying that it would Karabus had been arrested for murder and forgery. all be sorted out within a few hours after which Retired, he had been augmenting his pension by he would be on the next plane home. doing locums overseas. Twelve years previously, Cyril, his wife Jenny, daughter, son in law and he had worked at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical two grandchildren were returning to Cape Town Centre (SKMC) in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab from Canada after attending his son Matthew’s Emirates (UAE). There, he had taken over the wedding. When checking in at Toronto airport, a care of three year-old Sara Al Ajaily, terminally staff member told him that there was a ‘security ill with acute myeloid leukaemia. He had no alert’ against his name. After checking with a idea that in October 2002 he had been charged superior, she