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August 13, 2004/Av 26 5763, Vol. 55, No. 47
South African Jews urged to reach out
MOIRA SCHNEIDER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
CAPE TOWN - South Africa's chief rabbi has accused the country's Jews of not sufficiently supporting MaAfrika Tikkun, the community's outreach ini-tiative, implying that Jews must do more to uplift and empower the country's blacks.
"What we need from the Jewish community, which we still haven't got, is something called acceptance," Cyril Harris told JTA in a recent interview.
"There's an unfortunate reluctance, a sort of suspicion about interacting with the black majority - particularly on the part of the older generation - which is absurd," he said, noting "a kind of restraint" when it comes to non-Jewish causes.
MaAfrika Tikkun provides skills training in the form of literacy programs and sewing and computer classes; upliftment pro-grams such as upgrading under-resourced schools, clinics and nurseries; personal development pro-grams such as leadership training for black school-children and after-hours tutoring in school subjects; poverty relief in the form of soup kitchens; and HIV/AIDS awareness programs.
"I'm hoping that this is only a time factor and that gradually most of the community will actually embrace" the MaAfrika Tikkun initiative, Harris said. "If there is to be proper interaction with the majority community, we're going to have to concentrate on it and try and develop a more correct human approach to the problems."
Others deny that the community isn't engaged.
Michael Bagraim, na-tional chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, said he "very strongly disagrees" that the community has been less than wholehearted in its support for the ini-tiative.
"We are behind them 100 percent - I don't hear anybody saying that what they're doing is wrong," Bagraim said.
"Every single person in their own right is trying to do as much as they can" to help the black majority, Bagraim said. "You can't just say because people haven't appeared at a particular Tikkun project, that they don't accept upliftment as a tool.
"I do two to three hours' work a day in my own sphere toward upliftment without charging for it - and I'm not an exception," said Bagraim, a labor lawyer. "If Tikkun asked me to come and do two hours a week at a project in Cape Town, I'm not so sure that I'd say no, but I've never been approached."
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