Doyen of Durban Jewry mourned

THE South African Jewish community is in mourning following the passing of communal stalwart John Moshal.

Hailing from a prominent Durban family, the 81-year-old held a number of roles including chairman of the United Communal Fund, president of the Council of KwaZulu-Natal Jewry, of which he was subsequently honorary life president. He also served as a member of the national executive council of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) for 30 years.

Paying tribute to Moshal, whose son Martin lives in Australia, SAJBD noted he was “renowned for his philanthropic record. Through the JAKAMaR Trust, the Moshal family humanitarian foundation that he and his wife Anna set up, he established a number of upliftment projects around the world”.

“They included Chiva Africa, which provided HIV/Aids training to local health professionals, the Moshal Scholarship Program that has provided hundreds of full scholarships to needy students, the importing of refurbished computers and their distribution to disadvantaged KZN schools, DIVOTE, which rehabilitates victims of terrorism in Israel and the assisting of homeless, abandoned and abused Jewish children in the Ukraine through the Tikva project.”

In an article titled “A giant has fallen”, The South African Jewish Report’s Tali Fineberg said his passing is “an unquantifiable loss” but stressed, “he leaves a legacy that will reverberate across generations and around the world.”

Recalling how Moshal built the firm he founded, Control Logic, into the largest industrial electronics company in the country, Fineberg quoted community member Cheryl Unterslak who noted, “John cared deeply for all the Jewish children in the KwaZulu-Natal region and since 2005, regardless of what school they were in, ensured that they would receive a Jewish education.”

The article also quoted Alana Baranov, who worked on a book about the Moshal family, titled Setting a Quiet Example.

She recalled, “He would always tell me his favourite quote from Pirkei Avot: ‘It’s not for us to complete the task, but neither can we step aside from it’.

“He would speak about how his family would travel ‘below the radar’, but ‘when we leave, we leave a world of good in our wake’. That’s really what he embodied.”