MICHAEL SCHNEIDER, pic right, is a true blue,
home grown example of a global Jewish citizen
The timing couldn’t have been better - with the community reeling from the impact of BDS campaigners’ recent successes in the South African theatre, the Board has chosen “GLOBAL JEWISH CITIZEN” as the theme for their 46th national conference next month.
The board are bringing a bevy of top speakers on the topic to address the community on Saturday night 27 August, and to affiliated organisations at the bi-annual conference on 28 August.
Take a look at this line-up of foreign speakers:
THE GLOBAL JEW - FROM MOROCCO
SERGE BERDUGO is President of the World Organisation for Moroccan Jewry, and since 1996 been Ambassador-at-large of the King of Morocco. He was born in 1937 in Meknes, Morocco, and obtained a law degree from Rabat University in 1961, a BA (Law and Economics) at the University of Paris in 1964, and is an alumnus of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.
Berdugo has held numerous important Jewish leadership positions, including as the vice-president and president of the Jewish community in Casablanca, vice-president in charge of international relations and secretary-general of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco, vice-president of the NGO Francophonie and Judaism¸ and has represented Morocco at the World Jewish Congress since 1979. Under his leadership, the CJC established the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation to renovate Jewish institutions such as synagogues, cemeteries and pilgrimage sites; the Museum of Moroccan Judaism was built in Casablanca, and various initiatives were started to better integrate the Jewish community in Morocco, including the website www.mimouna.net.
He served as Morocco’s Tourism Minister from 1993 until 1995, and was vice-president of the Casablanca Chamber of Commerce and Industry for seven years. King Hassan II awarded him Morocco’s highest honour, the Commander of the Order of the Throne in 1995 for his outstanding contribution to the promotion of Morocco’s image abroad and his service for the Jewish Moroccan Community, and His Majesty King Mohammed VI awarded him the Commander of National Merit in 2005. He received the 1992 Prize Concordia of the Prince of Asturias by Spain, and he was granted the title of Knight of the Légion d’Honneur by France in 2002.
He is married, with three sons.
THE GLOBAL JEW – ISRAEL’S MINISTER OF DIASPORAH AFFAIRS
YULI YOEL EDELSTEIN is Israel’s Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs. He was born in Chernovitz in the former Soviet Union in 1958. In 1978, as a fourth-year student of foreign languages in Moscow, his application for an exit visa was denied. Edelstein joined the Refusenik movement and became involved in Zionist activities such as teaching Hebrew. He was arrested by the KGB on trumped up-charges of illegal possession of drugs, and spent three years in the notorious Soviet Gulag. After he was freed, he made Aliyah with his family in July 1987, and they settled in Alon Shvut, a small town near Jerusalem located in Judean Hills.
In Israel, Edelstein graduated from the Jerusalem Fellows, a prestigious programme for senior educators, and worked in a number of educational institutions. He was one of the founders and leaders of Yisrael ba-Aliya, a new political party that had considerable success in its first elections in 1996.
Edelstein has served in several important government roles, including as Deputy Minister and Minister of Immigrant Absorption, and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. After Yisrael ba-Aliyah merged with Likud, Edelstein soon become one of its leaders. He has also served as the chairman of the Israel-Canada Parliamentary Friendship League, promoting bilateral cooperation.
THE GLOBAL JEW – FIGHTING ANTI-SEMITISM UNDER CHAVEZ
SAMMY EPPEL was born on 21 January 1948, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and lives in the capital, Caracas. He is a member of the governing body of the Venezuelan Jewish community (CAIV), co-director of its Information and Analysis Commission, and acting director of Commission of Human Rights of B’nai Brith. He is a lecturer and presenter of the Hasbara Spanish Programme, and is active in inter-faith relations.
Since 2004, he has studied government-sponsored anti-Semitism in Venezuela, presenting extensively on this topic in Spanish and English, including at the Global Forum Jerusalem, ICCA meetings in London and Ottawa, YIISA Institute at Yale, Tel Aviv University, Stephen Roth Institute in Budapest and Paris, ADL, and Israeli President’s Conference.
Eppel trained as an engineer, was a founding member of Kibbutz Grofit in the Arava in Israel, and lived there from 1970 to 1974. He founded the Fundacion Madre Maria Luisa Casar in 1995, www.madreluisa.org, an organisation that cares for underprivileged children in the worst slums of Caracas. It runs a school, a medical facility and food preparation centre. He is the foundation’s current president.
Eppel is also a consultant, political analyst and prolific journalist. He has published over 500 articles and is a columnist for El Universal, a major Venezuelan newspaper He was a correspondent for World Press Review magazine and now writes for www.worldpress.org. He is a member of Inter-American Press Association (Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP)). He is frequent guest commentator on radio and television in Venezuela and abroad.
THE GLOBAL JEW - FROM INDIA
RALPHY E JHIRAD a key leader of the Jewish Community in Mumbai, India and heads the Indian Zionist Federation. He is the immediate Past President and National Chairman of the Indian Masorti (“Traditional”) Movement, which comprises six synagogues. He is the Vice-President of the Federations of the Indo-Israel Chambers of Commerce. For 13 years, he was director at the India branch of the World ORT Union, the world’s largest Jewish education and vocational training non-governmental organisation, in London. He was the Indian youth delegate at the World Zionist Congress at age 25 and headed the Indian delegation to the last World Zionist Conference.
He has recently been responsible for organising the renovation of the Navgaon Cemetery and the building of the Jerusalem Gate to its entrance. He was honorary secretary of the 125th anniversary committee of the Keneseth Eliyahoo synagogue in 2009, and is playing the same role on the committee of the Magen David Synagogue for their 150th anniversary this November. Jhirad’s family synagogue is the Tiphereth Israel Synagogue.
Jhirad is a Chartered Engineer and a Production Engineer by education and training. He teaches computer literacy in underprivileged schools in Mumbai and runs a Rotary program through which 3,000 schools are equipped with computers.
He is married to Yael, who is also active in the Indian Jewish Community, and they have 2 sons – Nathaniel and Avniel.
THE MOST GLOBAL OF JEWS – FROM ANTI-APARTHEID ACTIVIST
TO THE VERY TOP OF WORLD COMMUNAL JEWISH AFFAIRS
MICHAEL SCHNEIDER is the outgoing Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), a post he has held since 2007. His distinguished career in international Jewish public service stretches over 40 years. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) from 1990 to 2003 after ten years of service in the field; in Iran during and after the Khomeini revolution, and in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia during the Communist era.
In 1983 he was sent to Ethiopia to establish welfare and development projects for that country’s Falasha population and, immediately prior to his elevation to the JDC’s top professional post, he was the Director General of the JDC’s Israel operations.
During his tenure as CEO, the Joint returned to the Soviet Union after its expulsion by Stalin in 1955. When the Soviet Union fell, JDC established an aid project for 250,000 impoverished elderly Jews, half of whom were former victims of Nazi persecution. JDC was also engaged in a decade-long series of rescues of Jews under duress in Iran, Syria, Yemen, and Bosnia, and it played a significant role in Operation Solomon which led to the airlift of 14,000 Jews out of Ethiopia to Israel.
Schneider then became CEO of the World Jewish Restitution Organisation. He embarked on a campaign to reclaim Jewish private and communal property lost during the Nazi and Communist eras that continues to this day. In 2005 he was appointed Chevalier De La Légion D’Honneur by the President of France.
Schneider was born in Paarl and grew up in Worcester. During the 1960s he was engaged in anti-apartheid activities and fled South Africa in 1964 to avoid arrest by the Special Branch.
Stay online with MyShtetl for all the latest on the SAJBD conference.
Shtetlers will be getting almost daily updates over the next few weeks:
- Attend the gala opening – we’ll tell you how, but first-come-first-served
- Opening programme - Find out about the local speakers and VIP’s
- Follow the deliberations and elections at the Sunday conference
- Find out all about the most stunning book – get yours first and save
- Meet the guest speakers – we’ll try and interview all of them for you
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