Faculty

We have divided the Faith & Resilience Tour into three sections:

• Cape Town
• Country Communities
• Johannesburg

In each section, we will be led by a very experienced community leader who will give us an inside view of the uniqueness of that community and engage us in a dialogue with the people who have made that community a success.

Rabbi Richard Newman (Cape Town)

Spiritual Leader
Temple Israel Cape Town

Rabbi Richard Newman was recently named spiritual leader at Temple Israel Synagogue in Cape Town. Prior to his current position, he worked for the University of Colorado Denver as a lecturer in Yiddish studies. He also served as the Rabbi at the Campus Hillel in Denver, and as a teacher with various congregations in the Denver area. He has written several articles on the Jewish community of Cape Town in the Journal of Jewish Affairs and is currently publishing an article about the Jews of Namibia. Rabbi Newman obtained a degree in Textiles and Art History, with a minor in Semitic Languages including Hebrew, Aramaic and Ugaritic from Leeds University in England. He returned to South Africa to complete a Master's Degree in Judaic Studies at the University of South Africa. Rabbi Newman was ordained as a Reform Rabbi by Beit Midrash L'limudei Yahadut in Israel in 2000.

Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft (Country Communities)

Spiritual Leader
African Jewish Congress
South African Country Communities

In his current position, Rabbi Silberhaft serves Jews in Jewish country communities in the following ways:

1. Performs weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, funerals, unvelings, and naming ceremonies.
2. Delivers Kosher food and other Jewish items.
3. Restores and oversees the maintenance of Jewish cemeteries throughout Southern Africa.
4. When a community ceases to function, he endeavors to preserve its legacy by removing foundation stones from synagogues and re-erecting them in the local cemetery.
5. Sees to the restoration of Jewish artifacts and Jewish books so that they can be put back into use.

From 1988 to 1989 Rabbi Silberhaft served as a Jewish Chaplain in the SA Defense Force. In 1993, he was appointed as the 7th Spiritual Leader to the Country Communities Department of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD). This department is responsible for ministering to the Jewish needs of over 3000 Jews spread across the face of South Africa. In 1997, Rabbi Silberhaft was officially appointed as the first spiritual leader to the African Jewish Congress, which is responsible for the Jewish communities of South Africa, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In 2006, Rabbi Silberhaft was named a Fellow of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship for Jewish Leadership in the United States.

David Saks (Johannesburg)

Associate Director
SA Jewish Board of Deputies

David Saks has been employed by the Jewish Board of Deputies since April 1997. In his current position, he is responsible for monitoring and evaluating anti semitism in South Africa. Prior to joining the Board of deputies, he worked as a curator for Museum Africa. He is also the editor of the Journal of Jewish Affairs (which largely deals with local Jewish history) and a columnist and reporter for the SA Jewish Report. He has written articles on the SA Jewish community for various publications including the World Jewish Congress Bulletin. In 2005, he was responsible for updating the latest Encyclopaedia Judaica entries that deal with the Jewish communities of Southern Africa. He earned a Master of Arts in history from Rhodes University.