RAC Director of Development Sherry Levy-Reiner has been visiting South Africa with her husband, Fred Reiner, Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C..

The Apartheid Museum, atop a gold reef about halfway between downtown Johannesburg and Soweto Township, where a critical battle in the war against apartheid took place in 1976, is South Africa's equivalent of a holocaust museum, telling the story of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to destroy the dignity, culture, languages, and spirit of this country’s indigenous peoples.

Its design clearly takes a page from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, from its stark and powerful architecture to its concept. As you enter, you are given a card at random – black or white – and your “status” determines both the door you enter and your initial experience of the museum.

The narrative of South Africa’s history is chronological, told through bushmen’s rock paintings, photos, videos, physical evidence, and eyewitness accounts. You may choose not to read some of the panels, but you cannot avoid the reality: a story of racism, oppression, brutality, courage, passion, determination, freedom, and, today, hope.

Among the video monitors is one running news clips of overseas anti-apartheid activities, the global village’s reaction to what was happening in South Africa in the 1980s. Two clips represent the U.S.: The Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking at a rally and Senator Howard Metzenbaum addressing the U.S. Senate.

I was so proud to see the former chair of our Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism standing up not only for his own deeply held beliefs, but – in my mind – for the commitment of the Reform Jewish Movement to supporting freedom, equality, and human rights.

This is not the only evidence of our Movement playing a significant role in ensuring the future of a free and democratic South Africa. In 1945, Rabbi Moses C. Weiler, then rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Johannesburg and founding rabbi of the Progressive Movement in this country, established the first primary school for the children of Alexandra Township in Johannesburg.

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela singles out the South African Progressive Jewish movement for its support of the school and unwillingness to hand it over to the white apartheid government. Now the M.C. Weiler School is a government school, and though it is still underfunded and inadequate in many ways, it is – as its motto says – a light in the darkness.

To this day – 60 years later – United Sisterhood (the South African counterpart to Women of Reform Judaism, or at that time, the NFTS) supports this school and many others in the townships. The Weiler School has received continuing assistance from WRJ, and, in 1991, a major grant from the RAC’s Marjorie Kovler Institute for Black-Jewish Relations.

United Sisterhood has just installed the Weiler School’s first kitchen; it will both serve as a teaching facility for providing vocational education to parents and considerably improve the school’s ability to sustain its feeding scheme, also supported by the Sisterhood and MAZON. Of the 1,000+ learners in the school, about 150 cannot afford to bring their own lunches, and the meal that the Sisterhood provides is often the only food the children have each day. About 15 of the children in the school are the sole providers for younger siblings.

United Sisterhood also feeds 1,000 street children who attend “New Nations,” a school in another poverty-stricken area of Johannesburg.

Temple Bet David, a Progressive congregation in a northern Johannesburg suburb, sponsors a feeding scheme at yet another primary school in Alexandra and a “matric” school for students from Alexandra who must pass a national exam for admission to university. Last year they boasted a 100% pass rate.

Temple Israel, the first Progressive synagogue in South Africa – celebrating its 70th anniversary this year – maintains its building in the inner-city Johannesburg neighborhood of Hillbrow, despite the fact that most of its members have moved away. Temple Israel has turned its nursery school building into a neighborhood crèche for the poorest of the poor and also distributes food every Shabbat to the homeless.

Surely, there is much more work to be done, both in the communities and on a policy level. And yet, South Africa has survived its history of oppression and brutality to become a nation of great promise and hope. It is rich in resources, people, creativity, and energy. Liberal Jews played an important role in its painful movement toward freedom, and the Progressive Jewish Movement, as a community, continues to help ensure that its future remains bright. All of the members of our worldwide Reform Jewish family should feel great pride.