CLICK HERE to read related article on MyShtetl on the current visit of the COP and EAJC delegations – this is the most important visit ever of world Jewish leaders to sunny SA shores

On Thursday, 11 February, a Hachnasat Sefer Torah (Torah Dedication) ceremony will take place at the Claremont-Wynberg Hebrew Congregation after Minchah-Maariv.

The Torah is being presented by the Euro-Asia Jewish Congress (EAJC) President Alexander Mashkevich (right in picture, with Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi last year) in memory of local Jewish communal giant Mendel Kaplan.

Mashkevich is part of the most senior Jewish delegation ever to visit South Africa, comprising some seventy delegates from the Congress of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations and the EAJC.

A highly successful businessman and prominent philanthropist who hails from Kazakhstan, Mashkevich has been at the forefront of initiatives to restore and equip synagogues, build schools and finance higher Jewish educational projects in the Former Soviet Union countries and further afield.

He describes the donation of Sifrei Torah as the program "most dear" to his heart.

Addressing the World Jewish Congress meeting in October last year, he stressed how Jewish communal life was based on the Torah, which meant that every synagogue, yeshiva or Jewish school needed to have a Torah scroll.

The very presence of such Scrolls, he said, were "a reminder of the symbol of the Jewish people and the code of honour that they all submitted to".

For more information please contact Wendy Kahn on 082 444-3675 or David Saks on 011 645-2536.

CLICK HERE to read related article on MyShtetl on the current visit of the COP and EAJC delegations – this is the most important visit ever of world Jewish leaders to sunny SA shores