July 2019 Our Community . Our People . Our Magazine Volume 95. No 10 June 2019 Our Community . Our People . Our Magazine Volume 95. No 9 March 2014 █ HASHALOM 1 March 2014 █ HASHALOM 1 Editorial 02 EDITORIAL Through Your Eyes 03 Special Feature 04 Current Affairs 06 To Above Board 08 Chasing the Dream 09 Entertainment 10 Past Tense 11 Bubkes 12 Community News 13 Young Israel Centre 13 SAJBD 14 UJC 15 Happy Anniversary to me DUHC 16 Hayley Lieberthal Beit David 17 Beth Shalom 18 Six years ago the month of July to me was just another Durban Holocaust and Genocide Centre 19 ordinary month on the calendar with some birthday dates Masada 20 to remember. I hadn’t the faintest idea that a year later, July would become a month that would hold significant meaning. Divote 21 UJW 22 I moved from Johannesburg to Durban in July 2014 to be UJW 23 with my now husband. Sure, I was apprehensive at first, Akiva College 24 who wouldn’t be? I had gotten my proverbial ducks in a row Wotsup WIZO 25 and received a work transfer, we had found a gorgeous sea Limmud 26 facing flat and all I had to do was pack my bags and get in Eden School 27 the car. In theory, it was perfect, yet deep down I wondered how I would adjust to new colleagues and how I would KZNC 28 navigate around a city where I didn’t know the road names, Talmud Torah 29 let alone where the closest grocery shop was. Yet I knew that Cycalive Poster 30 my future lay in Durban and I met every challenge head on. Cooking with Judy and Linda 31 Social and Personal 32 It wasn’t until I made friends within our community that I felt Diary of Events 32 a true sense of belonging to our East coast. I was bowled over at how a smaller community stood firmer and supported The views expressed in the pages of Hashalom are not necessarily those of the each other. I was blown away that there wasn’t any gossip Editorial Board or any other organisation or religious body unless otherwise about this one and that one. Everyone I met in our beloved Hashalom merely reflects views of particular organisation or individual. community was just as special as the next. I was truly home! Hashalom Editorial Board: However, fate - for a lack of a better word, had something Editor: Hayley Lieberthal Sub Editor: Colin Plen, Cookie Isaacs more in store for me. I joined the Hashalom team in March Editorial Board: Hayley Lieberthal, Michelle Campbell 2018 and in July I was given a shot to be interim editor of Lauren Shapiro, Mikki Norton Production Manager: Jacqui Herbst this amazing magazine. A year has passed and I cannot help feel blessed to be part of our community. To be the editor of Notice to Organisations/Contributors: All material to be submitted by email to a magazine that represents who we are, where we all come [email protected] from and how much we stand together. DEADLINE FOR THE AUGUST EDTION: 7 July Get in touch with the editor: [email protected] Advertisements I want to thank you all for carrying on being you, for opening Contact: Jacqui Herbst P.O. Box 10797 Marine Parade 4056 your arms out to new members and making us all feel as if Tel: (031) 335 4451Email: [email protected] we have always been a part of your lives. Hashalom is issued under the auspices of the SAJBD KZN Council, KwaZulu-Natal Zionist Council and the Durban Jewish Club. I would also like to hear from other members who have Typesetting Supplied. Designed by RBG Studios, email: [email protected] moved to Durban, tell me more about your story, how you Printed by Print 24 came to be here and why Durban is close to your heart. Visit our website: www.hashalom.co.za Email me at [email protected] 2 HASHALOM July 2019 THROUGH YOUR EYES READERS SHARE THEIR VIEWS BY LAUREN SHAPIRO Ballito-nik Paula Green returns to Israel after 27 years and is struck by the differences Paula (left) with cousins Meira Bat El and Ophra Seltzer at Rosh Hanikrah PIC Supplied HASHALOM IS PROUD TO BRING YOU A NEW SECTION “THROUGH YOUR EYES” IN WHICH READERS SHARE THEIR VIEWS ON TOPICS CLOSE TO THEIR HEARTS. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOUR “THROUGH YOUR EYES”, CONTACT US AT [email protected] FAMILY REUNION sociologist friend to the kibbutz newspaper cartoonist what the When her Aunt from Manchester phoned to say she would be solution is. No-one had an answer. Yet Israelis must live with spending Pesach with her daughter in Netanya, semi-retired this paradox every day. “In a train station concourse in Tel Aviv literary specialist Paula Green decided to join them. Then she got there was a piano,” Paula recalls. “And sitting at the piano was a in touch with long-lost cousins in Tel Aviv and Carmiel. Then she handsome young soldier, lost in enchanting music, with his assault made contact with another cousin on the other side of her family rifle on his knee. For me, that encapsulates the contradiction – whom she’d never even met. both the beauty and the challenge of Israel.” Israel is at the heart of the Jewish people, so it’s unsurprising that For all its complexities, Paula declares: “I’m proud to be part of this many of us have relations there, whether we know it or not. “There incredible country; this incredible line that goes right back to the bible.” was a great sense of family; of getting to know each other,” Paula says of the trip. “What an incredibly storied place,” she describes. “People haven’t just landed up there by chance. Everyone in Israel has their own story about how and why they got there.” Paula also caught up with a friend on a Kibbutz, and sought out the family of a dear friend of her late husband Basil. “This was a journey of making connections,” she affirms. 27 YEARS LATER Paula was last in Israel in 1992, and it’s changed a lot, she says. “The high-rise buildings are mind-blowing. They’re just everywhere! But it isn’t South Africa. In a small country, you have to build upwards.” The technological developments in daily Israeli life made an impression. “I was a bit intimidated by the bus cards and the train app,” she confesses, “but there was always someone friendly willing to help and I found my way around.” And, boy, did she find her way around – from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat – in what she calls “a wonderful, rich, textured experience”. COMPLEXITIES “I’m not a political person, but Israel is a very complex issue,” admits Paula. Her ambivalence is evident in her language: “Israel What are your thoughts on Israel? Do you is something to be immensely proud of. I so want to be proud of feel strongly about an issue you’d like to it. I am proud of it. But at the same time there is this other story of see featured in Hashalom? Write and tell Arabs who are suffering… I struggle with the complexity of it all.” us at [email protected] During her trip Paula asked everyone from taxi drivers to a SPECIAL FEATURE PASSPORT TO FREEDOM BY LAUREN SHAPIRO Bobba from Balbirishok? Zaida from Zeimys? Applying for an EU passport is easy from the east coast. here are many reasons to apply for a Lithuanian passport. acquire property. “Being a part of the EU as well as the European For some it is a window to the world through visa-free travel; Free Trade Association (EFTA), Lithuania grants both you and your for others, an opportunity to study and work in the European children excellent opportunities,” observes Dainius. TUnion (EU). Yet others wish to take advantage of business opportunities, but for many it is about reconnecting with their roots. For the Kinderlach Family ties Sam’s father was born in 1916 in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils) in Latvia. “He saw what was happening with anti-Semitism and left “I always kept my mom’s documents; I didn’t want to feel like I for South Africa at 18 years old,” Sam recounts. His mother – was discarding her,” confides Debbie Werner. Her mother Judy Sam’s Bobba – could not travel at the time and later died in Latvia, Melman (nee Jubileras) OBM came to South Africa from Vilnius but she was originally Lithuanian, and had a Lithuanian passport. at age three in 1926. Debbie and her brother Franky Melman On the strength of this document, Sam applied for reinstatement looked into citizenship reinstatement in 2016. They met with of Lithuanian citizenship in November 1917. The process was Dainius Ambrazaitis from In Jure law firm based in Vilnius, who has successful, and he is expecting his citizenship papers and processed over 300 reinstatements from South Africa, including passport by October. “It’s so much easier not having to apply several from Durban. He told them: “you have a 99.9% chance.” for visas,” says Sam, who travels regularly. “I’m ecstatic,” Sam The following year, Debbie recalls, they received a “wonderful yontif declares. “Everyone who can should apply.” gift” – an email congratulating them on a successful application. Sam’s son works for an international company, so the business “My parents left us a legacy,” Debbie smiles. “We now have broader advantages will benefit him too.