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South African Jewish journalist Jeremy Gordin murdered in home burglary at 70
(JTA) — Jeremy Gordin, one of South Africa’s most prominent journalists, wrote repeatedly in recent months about burglaries at his family’s Johannesburg home.
In a weekly column, he expressed dismay at the rampant levels of crime, growing urban decay and regular power outages endured by South Africans as a result of mismanagement and corruption. In one — titled “It is getting dark, too dark to see” after the Bob Dylan lyric — he addressed his two children, both in their twenties.
“I’m not suggesting that you’re going to find yourselves in desperate flight across your own border, that your graveyard may be ploughed up and strewn with garbage. But there comes a time when things are clearly falling apart,” he concluded.
He added, with the allusion to his Jewish identity clear to anyone familiar with Jewish history, “And you, who have your whole lives before you (as they say), need to consider seriously going to live elsewhere. We’ve been doing it for centuries, after all.”
On March 31, Gordin’s worst fears came to pass: He was murdered during a night robbery at his home. He was 70.
South African police described the incident as “a robbery gone wrong” but did not describe the exact cause of death. Seven people were arrested in Johannesburg two weeks later; one was driving a car that had been stolen from Gordin’s residence.
It was a tragic end for Gordin’s 70-year South African story, which, as with so many of his country’s Jews, intersected sharply with both the story of Israel and with the struggle of Black South Africans. As a lifelong journalist, he had at times headed both South Africa’s version of Playboy and its storied working-class Black tabloid, and also ran an initiative that used reporting to prove the innocence of people who were wrongfully imprisoned. He won the country’s annual top journalism prize multiple times.
Gordin was also a friend to many, frequently opening his home in Johannesburg’s Parkview neighborhood to guests. (This reporter was one of them during a stint in Johannesburg for Efe, the Spanish newspaper.)
Gordin was born in Pretoria in 1952, in a Jewish family with Lithuanian and Latvian origins. After a spell in South Vietnam, where his pharmacist father worked for the United States, the family returned to South Africa. Gordin went to high school in Brakpan, a town in the industrial east of the Great Johannesburg emblematic of the country’s white Afrikaner working class to which he often referred in his articles.
Gordin obtained a scholarship to study in Israel and completed a bachelor’s degree while playing rugby at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Back in his country, he did his military service volunteering for the South African Defence Force’s elite 1 Parachute Battalion, then started a prolific career in journalism.
In a breakout moment, he published a book in 1998 based on his conversations with the apartheid government’s death squad leader Eugen de Kock. Then incarcerated, de Kock candidly told Gordin about his deeds, but most importantly about those who had ordered his crimes, for which they were hardly questioned and never tried.
Gordin authored another canonical book of recent South Africa history, his biography of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma. Published in 2010, a year after Zuma took power, Gordin’s went beyond the usual assumptions about the Zulu former freedom fighter who learned how to read and write as an adult and was often underestimated by South Africa’s intellectual class.
Zuma left office in 2018 after a tenure marked by charges of corruption, cronyism and incompetence. Gordin’s biography has been criticized for being excessively indulgent with its subject, but it remains essential for understanding Zuma’s psychology and the motivations behind his actions.
In the early 1990s, after a period living in San Francisco, Gordin became the launch editor of Playboy South Africa. (He posed nude, with only a magazine as cover, to promote Playboy’s South Africa launch.) In a recent essay, Gordin recounted trying to land a then-unknown Charlize Theron for the magazine’s first cover. Invoking Yiddish terms, Gordin recalled journalists who had passed away, described the actress’s unembarrassed audition, and also managed to explore changing race and class dynamics in South Africa.
(Around this time, his friend Roy Isacowitz wrote in a remembrance published shortly after his death, the pair had successfully gotten a media executive censured for calling them “pushy little Jewboys” — though he said they accepted the description.)
Jeremy Gordin, at right, stands in front of covers of the Sun, the South African tabloid he oversaw for many years. (Courtesy Gordin family)
In 2012 he was named caretaker editor of the Daily Sun, a South African tabloid wildly popular among the Black working class. The paper lost much of its appeal after the death of its founder, larger-than-life Afrikaner media executive Deon du Plessis. Gordin brought back the pride, the punch and many of the readers to the paper. Or, as a headline made for him by his colleagues when he retired said, he “brought rock’n roll back to the Sun.”
The tabloid’s news largely relied on cases of violence, gossip and sex often featuring “tokoloshes,” fantastic creatures of popular African mythology whose encounters with the Sun’s readers were reported nationwide in the first person to its many correspondents. The readership and the paper’s foot soldiers were 100% Black. They collected the stories and sent them to the Johannesburg newsroom, where a group of experienced white male journalists including Gordin translated their texts in the characteristic Daily Sun language.
Gordin’s world couldn’t be further away from the one his newspaper reflected. But as his colleague at the paper Vincent Pienaar wrote after his death, “Not only did he understand the ethos of the publication, he embraced it.”
The tabloid took on serious stories, too. During his tenure as the paper’s editor the Daily Sun broke the story of the death at the hands of police officers of Mozambican immigrant taxi driver Mido Macias. A reader had filmed his gratuitously brutal arrest and sent it to the newspaper. Eight police officers involved in the victim’s death in custody were ultimately sentenced to 15 years in prison.
After leaving the Daily Sun, Gordin took on a role coordinating the Wits Justice Project, a journalism program focused on the plight of innocent or unfairly treated prisoners. In 2011 he helped secure the release of Fusi Mofokeng and Tshokolo Joseph Mokoena, who had served 19 years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
Gordin’s many friends say that his sympathy for the underdog was inextricable from the Jewish traditions and attitudes he inherited.
Although not religiously observant, Gordin peppered his articles with Jewish stories and jokes and Yiddish words and expressions. His sense of humor was strongly influenced by his Jewishness, as it was the combination of principle and humorous compassion that defined his personality. He was extremely well-read and voraciously curious, loved to share what he discovered with friends and indulged in sassy but harmless gossip both in private and in his articles.
Sometimes, his Jewish identity and his journalism entwined as when, in 2016, he reported from Johannesburg about the extradition hearing of a Hasidic rabbi, Eliezer Berland, wanted in Israel on rape charges. His final column, published the day before his death, explained, and condemned, the proposed right-wing judicial reforms in Israel.
Rabbi Sa’ar Shaked of the Beit Emanuel Progressive Synagogue in Johannesburg said Gordin as a friend and “wild spirit” who didd’t regularly attend services but was a repeat guest speaker at the synagogue to discuss weekly Torah portions and a variety of aspects of Jewish history and law.
Despite not attending services regularly, Gordin’s role in the community is described as “very active” by Wendy Ovens, a South African health professional in the NGO sector who served with him on the management committee of Beit Emanuel in 2011.
“His knowledge on Judaism and Jewish history was incredible,” Ovens said. She said his Jewish identity fueled his core mission: “He was community-minded and believed in justice and in what was right.”
Gordin is survived by his wife, Deborah Blake, and his children, Jake and Nina.
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Eli Sharabi’s ‘Hostage’ memoir named Jewish book of the year
(JTA) — Eli Sharabi’s memoir “Hostage,” recounting his experience in Hamas captivity after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, has been named Book of the Year by the National Jewish Book Awards, organizers announced Wednesday.
The awards, presented by the Jewish Book Council and considered among the most prestigious honors in Jewish literature, recognize outstanding English-language books of Jewish interest across dozens of categories. Founded in 1950, the program is the longest-running North American awards initiative devoted to Jewish books.
Sharabi’s memoir, which details his abduction from Kibbutz Be’eri and the more than year he spent in captivity, became a bestseller in Israel and was later released in English in the United States.
“This recognition means so much to me, not only personally, but for the memory of my family and all those we lost,” Sharabi said in a statement. “’Hostage’ is my testimony, a story of my survival, written so others could bear witness. I hope it helps ensure that what happened is never forgotten.”
Other major winners reflect the breadth of contemporary Jewish writing, spanning scholarship, fiction, memoir and children’s literature.
In American Jewish studies, Pamela S. Nadell won for “Antisemitism, an American Tradition,” a look at the forms antisemitism took in the country from the early Dutch settlers to the present day. The Russian-born journalist Julia Ioffe took the autobiography and memoir prize for “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy.” The book blends memoir, journalism and history to examine modern Russia through the lens of women’s experiences.
Jack Fairweather’s “The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice,” the story of a Jewish judge and Holocaust survivor from Stuttgart who pursued Nazi perpetrators in post-war Germany, won the biography award.
Fiction honors went to Allison Epstein for “Fagin the Thief,” a retelling of the Dickens novel “Oliver Twist” from the perspective of its Jewish antihero, and Zeeva Bukai received the debut fiction prize for “The Anatomy of Exile,” about the multigenerational echoes of a secret love affair between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian poet.
The Hebrew fiction in translation category recognized “Dog,” by Yishay Ishi Ron, translated by Yardenne Greenspan, which also earned a selection in the book club category. The novella’s protagonist is an Israeli combat veteran haunted by his service in one of the Gaza campaigns prior to Oct. 7.
This year’s awards arrive as the Jewish discourse has been reshaped by the aftermath of Oct. 7, a global surge in antisemitism and the polarizing debate over Israel that followed. Last year’s winner for book of the year, “10/7: 100 Human Stories” by Lee Yaron, was also an account of the attacks and their aftermath.
Jewish anxieties in light of Oct. 7 are the subject of Sarah Hurwitz’s “As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us,” which won in the contemporary Jewish life and practice category. Hurwitz, a speechwriter in the Obama administration, provides a primer on Jewish history, texts and practices in order to counter what she calls misinformation among Jews, their allies and their critics.
“Especially amid rising antisemitism and Jewish authors facing increased scrutiny, Jewish books have the power to create and sustain community,” said Naomi Firestone-Teeter, CEO of Jewish Book Council, in a statement announcing the winners.
In “Hostage,” Sharabi writes about the terror of his abduction and the daily struggle to survive after Hamas fighters stormed Kibbutz Be’eri. He would spend 491 days in captivity, much of it in tunnels beneath Gaza, before being released on Feb. 8, 2025, as part of a negotiated deal. Throughout the ordeal, Sharabi clung to the hope of rescue, writing: ‘I refuse to let myself drown in pain. I am surviving. I am a hostage. In the heart of Gaza. A stranger in a strange land. In the home of a Hamas-supporting family. And I’m getting out of here. I have to. I’m getting out of here. I’m coming home.”
Other nonfiction winners included Elissa Bemporad’s “Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Volume 1,” which won in history; Anna Hájková’s “People Without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust,” honored in Holocaust studies alongside translator William Ross Jones; and Tobias Schiff’s “Return to the Place I Never Left,” which won the Holocaust memoir award, with Dani James recognized for translation.
Awards recognizing contemporary Jewish thought and scholarship included Lawrence Grossman’s “Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945–2025,” and Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach’s “A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe,” which won multiple prizes, including scholarship and women’s studies.
In children’s and young readers’ categories, Alison Goldberg’s “The Remembering Candle,” illustrated by Selina Alko, won for children’s picture book; Janice Shapiro’s “Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship” took the prize for middle grade literature; and Eugene Yelchin’s graphic memoir “I Wish I Didn’t Have to Tell You This” won in young adult literature.
Other winners include Miriam Udel’s “Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature,” which won in education and Jewish identity; Raegan Steinberg, Alexandre Cohen and Evelyne Eng’s “Arthurs: Home of the Nosh,” honored in food writing and cookbooks; Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s “Golden Threads,” which won for Sephardic culture; Elizabeth E. Imber’s “Uncertain Empire,” for writing based on archival material; and Aharon Shabtai’s “Requiem & Other Poems,” translated by Peter Cole, which won the poetry award.
The winners will be honored at an awards ceremony in New York next month hoisted by the entertainer Jonah Platt. At the ceremony, journalist Sam Feedman will be presented with the council’s Mentorship Award, named in honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel, longtime former director of the JBC. Freedman, a former New York Times reporter and professor at the Columbia Journalism School, taught a popular course that helped over 100 students turn their ideas into books, including “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” Gal Beckerman’s 2010 history of the Soviet Jewry movement.
“Sam Freedman changed my life as a writer,” Beckerman said in a statement. “He believed in me before I believed in myself, pushed me to take my work seriously, and opened doors I didn’t even know existed. With tough love and deep generosity, he guided me through the daunting process of writing a book as if it were his own. What he did for me, he did for dozens of writers.”
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Andorra’s tiny Jewish community reels after local carnival features mock execution of Israeli effigy
(JTA) — An annual festival in Andorra drew condemnation from the country’s small Jewish community after an effigy bearing the Israeli flag was staged in a mock trial and then hung and shot.
The incident was part of the traditional Catalan festival Carnestoltes, which occurs yearly before Lent, the 40-day period that precedes Easter. At Monday’s festival in Andorra, where a mock king is typically tried and burned, organizers instead used an effigy wearing blue with the Israeli flag painted on its face.
During the festivities, the Israeli effigy was symbolically tried, hung, shot and burned, according to social media posts and a report in the Israeli outlet YNet.
ABERRANTE muestra de antisemitismo en Andorra durante el carnaval. pic.twitter.com/GeIdF635wd
— Dani Lerer (@danilerer) February 16, 2026
The incident drew outcry from the microstate’s tiny Jewish community, which only just got its first full-time rabbi, a Chabad emissary, in the last two years.
“This is a ritual they perform every year as part of carnival, where they mock many things,” Jewish Andorra resident Esther Pujol told YNet. “This time they dressed the effigy in the colors of the Israeli flag, with a Star of David on its face. They put it on trial, sentenced it to death and carried out the sentence by shooting and burning it. It is completely unacceptable.”
Pujol told the outlet that it was the first time she had seen the festival include anti-Israel or antisemitic elements, and that she had contacted Andorran lawmakers to express her outrage. The mayor of Encamp, the city where the incident took place, and local politicians took part in the ceremony, according to YNet.
The European Jewish Congress also decried the display in a post on X, writing that the mock-execution was a “deeply disturbing act that risks normalizing antisemitism and incitement.”
“This incident requires unequivocal condemnation, full clarification of responsibilities and concrete measures to ensure that antisemitism is never tolerated in public celebrations or institutions in Andorra or anywhere in Europe,” the post continued.
Other Lent festivities have also been the site of antisemitism in recent years, with Belgian celebrations in 2019 featuring antisemitic caricatures and a Spanish parade in 2020 featuring a Holocaust-themed display.
The incident marks a rare instance of open turmoil for Jews in Andorra, which is nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. While France and Spain have seen widespread pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic incidents in recent years, Andorra has largely avoided similar tensions.
In September, Andorra formally announced its recognition of Palestinian statehood alongside a host of other European nations during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
But local Jews have also sought to remain under the radar, considering that Andorra officially prohibits non-Catholic houses of worship. The Jewish community calls their gathering place a community center rather than a synagogue. In 2023, Andorra’s parliament elected a Jewish lawmaker for the first time.
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British woman who removed an Israeli hostage poster from a memorial site is convicted of theft
(JTA) — A British woman who is married to a Jewish anti-Zionist activist has been convicted of theft in connection with a 2024 incident in which she removed an Israeli hostage poster and threw it in the trash.
Fiona Monro, 58, of Brighton, England, was found guilty of theft, but not convicted of criminal damage for charges stemming from a February 2024 incident in which she took a large laminated poster of Israeli hostage Tzachi Idan and disposed of it.
A relative of Idan who lives in a neighboring town, Howe, returned the poster to the memorial site after Monro threw it away. A week later, Monro also wrote the phrase “Pray for the 30,000 murdered Palestinians” on the memorial but was acquitted of charges related to the vandalism, according to Brighton and Hove News.
The incident came at a time when Israeli hostage posters were being vandalized frequently by activists across the globe who said they were protesting the war in Gaza. The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Idan was killed in Hamas captivity and his remains were returned to Israel a year ago during a negotiated ceasefire.
“This crime was one out of 50 times the memorial was vandalised and it took two years to get justice. But it is possible to get a win,” Heidi Bachram, one of the memorial’s organizers, told the Jewish News following Monro’s convict. “We cannot let hateful people get away with attacking us.”
Monro told police that the memorial located in Brighton’s Palmeira Square “did not represent the Jewish community,” citing her marriage to the prominent activist Tony Greenstein. Greenstein was expelled from Great Britain’s Labour Party in 2018 over his social media comments about Israel, which his party deemed antisemitic.
“The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening,” Monro said in the police interview. “A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.”
After Monro’s lawyer, Hamish McCallum, requested that the jury consider whether it was proportionate to convict her on the basis she was exercising her right to express her political views, Judge Stephen Mooney rejected the proposal.
“This is not therefore a case of the state seeking to prosecute the defendant disproportionately for expressing her own views or otherwise interfering with her rights,” said Mooney. “It is a case of the state prosecuting the defendant for putting her views above those of others and causing them wholly unnecessary distress by so doing.”
Mooney gave Monro an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered her to pay $1,637 in prosecution costs.
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