SAUJS, the South African Union of Jewish Students, is a national, student-led organisation creating Jewish life for students across South Africa.

We are so much more than the events we run. We are building Jewish life for the next generation — creating spaces where Jewish students can connect, celebrate, lead, engage with Israel and, most importantly, feel that they belong.

Our students don’t just participate in Jewish life; they create it. They lead, they organise, they campaign, they show up for one another, and they do it all while balancing university, work and everything else that comes with being a student.

That is what makes SAUJS a rising star. We are a generation of students who are not waiting for someone else to build our future Jewish community for us.

We are building it ourselves.

We are built by the students we exist to serve. We create spaces to celebrate Jewish life, reclaim our narrative and bring students together. Most importantly, we have built what I believe is the safest place in the Diaspora to be unapologetically Jewish on campus.

We have been incredibly fortunate to inherit communities, institutions and values that were built long before us. Our responsibility now is not simply to protect what we were given, but to take it further to make it stronger, more inclusive and more meaningful for the generation that comes next.

We want to be part of a South Africa where young people know that they have a role in shaping the country they will inherit. Where we are willing to get involved, stand up for what we believe in, listen to one another and build communities we are proud to belong to.

And within SAUJS, we want to keep doing exactly that: building a Jewish student community that is proud, connected, courageous and unapologetically itself.

Because we aren’t building this for ourselves, we are building it for everyone who comes after us.

We’ve made sure that when a Jewish student leaves home for university, they never have to leave their Jewish home behind.

We’ve created a community that follows them onto campus, a place where they can find their people, celebrate their Judaism, engage with Israel, make memories and know that someone has their back.

We’ve watched students arrive on campus and wear their kippot and Magen Davids with pride, speak about Judaism in their lecturer halls and know that they never have to choose between being Jewish and belonging.

That, more than anything we have achieved, is what we hope inspires people.

Because university should be a time when young people discover who they are, and we want every Jewish student to discover that they can be proudly, unapologetically Jewish while doing it.

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