The Mervyn Smith Memorial Podcast Series on South African Jewry

Shifting Attitudes Towards Israel and Zionism

For South African Jews, support for Israel has ceased to be the one thing they can all agree upon. Three distinguished panelists debate the meaning, old and new, of engaging with Israel as South African Jews.

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Ignorance is Bliss? Black Africans’ Attitudes Towards Jews

Dr Adam Mendelson discusses his trailblazing study that seeks to map out the attitudes and perceptions of Black South Africans towards Jewish people in three major urban areas in the country.

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Looking Back: Memories of an Anti-Apartheid Activist

“I never thought I’d go back to live in South Africa,” says Lorna Levy, a trade unionist and anti-Apartheid activist who spent decades in exile after being banned from her native South Africa. Lorna reflects on her almost accidental activism, starting in her student days in 1950s Johannesburg.

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Black Lives Matter: Identity Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Prof. Deborah Posel, a sociologist at the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, analyzes how racial tensions have played out in South Africa since the end of Apartheid in 1994.

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The Other Goldene Medina: The History of South African Jewry

Milton Shain, emeritus professor of history at the University of Cape Town, specializing in the history of Jews and anti-Semitism in South Africa, tells the very different story of a Jewish settlement in the New World.

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