Presumably some of the elderly members of the audience had no idea what the speaker was getting at when the subject of Vaseline came up in his talk on M K Gandhi and Herman Kallenbach. They, after all, belonged to a time when Vaseline was still associated with skin care rather than as a means…
Earlier this month, Ben Levitas waded into Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Marius Fransman for claiming that Jews were benefiting and Muslims being disadvantaged by the DA’s tender policies in Cape Town. The SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) has also since issued a statement condemning those remarks. Far from backing down, however,…
Wolf Ehrlich and I eyeball each other all day. The corridor wall outside our offices is lined with the portraits of former presidents of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), and Ehrlich’s is directly opposite where I sit. He was quite a big deal in his day. Apart from heading up the SAJBD, he…
Those who picked up a booklet entitled “Vaccination: The Devil’s Medicine” in the Oriental Plaza recently will have read the following in the introductory section: ”The two fundamental components of vaccination are Filth and Poison. Vaccination is part of a massive conspiracy of the Yahood [Jews] to incapacitate and decimate the populations of Africa and…
I might be the only one ever to have had a cat thrown at him to stop him from snoring. My wife did it. In her defence, she was taking heavy medication at the time and was befuddled with sleep. However, that was of not much comfort to Sheretz, our large black tabby, as he…
The following imagined scenario seems to me to sum up pretty accurately the latest round of hostilities between Hamas and Israel: imagine a man who drives a Mini and another who drives a large lorry – let’s call them Abdul and Avi. Now imagine that Abdul hates Avi – really hates him. One day, Abdul…
With less than a week to go, the result of the US presidential election is too close to call. In the case of South Africa, you would have to go back all the way to the early 1950s to say the same thing. Ever since then, the results of elections in this country have been…
Last week, I participated in an unveiling ceremony for a new monument in memory of 12 Jewish fighters who died serving on the Boer side in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. The monument is located near the Burgher Memorial on Platrand, a ridge bordering Ladysmith to the south-west, and was erected as a joint initiative…
Given how crudely offensive it was, the reaction to the Zapiro “dick” cartoon has been surprisingly muted. No doubt, this is in part due to everyone being “penised-out” in the wake of the Brett Murray affair. After all, what more is there to say on the subject? Another reason, perhaps, is that at least Murray’s…
As those who have been reading the Sunday Times over the past couple of weeks may know, St. John’s College, one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious private schools, was recently embarrassed by a mock Nazi demonstration conducted by some of its pupils at a school assembly. What happened was that for “Moustache Day”, one of the…
