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Leadership fails the Goldstone family
As has occurred with President Jacob Zuma and the ANC’s leadership in the case of Julius Malema, the lack of proactive and decisive leadership in good time, the leadership of the Jewish community in South Africa has landed itself and the community in an embarrassing and divisive situation after internationally respected ex-constitutional judge Richard Goldstone effectively was prevented from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah at the Sandton shul next month.
In their initial reaction to the news that Judge Goldstone has, in the interest of his grandson, decided not to attend the ceremony, both Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein and chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies Zev Krengel, glossed over the fact that the Goldstones were put under pressure by threatened protest action at the shul, should the judge attend the ceremony.
Only in a late statement last Friday, made in the face of escalating embarrassment over the situation, did Rabbi Goldstein mention in passing that “the Chief Rabbi was brought into discussions around the bar mitzvah when threats of protest at the shul’s bar mitzvah proceedings if Goldstone attended were made known to the Sandton Shul committee”.
In an earlier statement, however, Krengel among others claimed that at no time was Judge Goldstone “even requested not to attend the bar mitzvah ceremony by any organisation or individual. Rather, this was a decision voluntarily taken by the Goldstone family and other (unspecified) respective parties.”
In the later statement by Goldstein, it also was said that “in discussions with the shul’s leadership, the Chief Rabbi reiterated that they should not turn Goldstone away and that he was free to attend the bar mitzvah”.
No indication, however, is given that any attempt has been made at any stage to engage those threatening the protest action to try and persuade them to abandon their plans. Neither is any indication given of what steps, if any, would be taken to ensure that the ceremony would not be disrupted.
Goldstone’s sin seems to be that he led a United Nations Human Rights Council mission in Gaza last year. The mission’s report was critical of both Israel and Hamas, and he is being accused now of having betrayed the Jewish state.
While not a single word of condemnation can be found in any of the statements by Goldstein and Krengel with regard to the threats of protest action, a statement late on Friday after the controversy had been blown up in the media, rings hollow when it says: “It is simply a question of decency and compassion to the bar mitzvah boy not to ruin his day.”
The opportunity of having a normal bar mitzvah shared in joy with his entire family, by then was already gone for ever for the boy because grown-ups could not be adult enough to rise above their narrow political views, and leadership was not brave enough to give decisive command.
Even, in my case, to breaking the law. Even to lie under oath in courts.
Even to rig court cases, curry favour with mob-bosses.
Let the Chief Rabbi learn to first be a mensch, then a jew. Perhaps I can help him to understand Torah.