Shadow over Holocaust ceremony

06 May 2016 - 09:50 By KAREN GWEE

Cape Town's annual Holocaust memorial ceremony went ahead without disruption yesterday despite an increasingly controversial equality court case over the decade-long ban on female singers at the ceremony.The ceremony, organised by the Cape Council of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) at Pinelands Cemetery, was attended by more than 1000 people.The gender discrimination case against the council will be heard in August.Last month, the plaintiffs offered to drop the case if a woman led the first 20 seconds of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika at the end of the ceremony, but they were rebuffed, said plaintiff Gilad Stern.Allowing women to sing at the Holocaust memorial ceremony would have caused "an implosion of what is a unifying ceremony and will exacerbate the divisiveness and disunity already created by the applicant's ill-considered court action", the board of deputies said last week.The board has proposed a colloquium on the issue in the next two months. The plaintiffs have suggested that the colloquium be chaired by former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs, said Stern. But the board dismissed this as "false reports".Two women's groups and a student group at the University of Cape Town have criticised the exclusion of female singers.The Union of Jewish Women and Women's International Zionist Organisation in Cape Town engaged with the Cape Council for 18 months on the issue to no avail, both organisations said on Wednesday."The SAJBD (Cape Council) decided against any change, including a number of compromises which we had put forward. It remains our position that the current situation is unacceptable."Most members of the South African Union of Jewish Students at UCT disagreed with the ban as it "is not something which makes most of us feel included, but rather excluded and marginalised", the union said...

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