(Author: Reviva Hasson, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) South Africa’s Jewish population has been steadily declining for decades. From a peak of close to 120,000 in the 1970s, the community has more than halved in size. By 2019, there were just over 52,000 Jews
(Author: Joanne Fedler, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) Editor’s note: January 2025 saw the passing of the distinguished South African artists and cartoonist Dov Fedler. We thank his daughter Joanne for this insightful and heartfelt tribute to her father, which provides at least
(Author: Yakub Nowakowski, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) “Time doesn’t pass over me, over us. It doesn’t erase anything, doesn’t undo it. I’m not alive. I died in Auschwitz, but no one knows it.” These haunting words of Charlotte Delbo, a French survivor of
(Author: Zita Nurok, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) The willow tree at the bottom of our backyard garden was the gift that nature gave me as a Jewish child growing up in small-town South Africa. It offered me the riches of my
(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) In Lewis Carrol’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, the walrus and the carpenter go for a walk on a beach. “The time has come”, the Walrus said, “To talk of many things … and why
(Author: Bernard Katz, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) Jewish Presence in Ancient Times (10th Century BCE – 3rd Century CE) The presence of Jews in Morocco goes back to early pre-Islamic times. Legends claim that it dates as far back to the First
(Author: Omi Morgenstern Leissner, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) I have hurled myself into something I have been meaning to do for years – a wad of papers that answers to name of “Granny’s and Grandpa’s.” They come in a cone, the kind
(Author: Wilf Stein, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) The town of Sutherland lies in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It has the reputation of being the coldest town in South Africa. As a descendant of a Sutherland family once wrote, “the water freezes
(Author: Charlotte Cohen, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn, 2025) Molly Cohen passed away just 9 days short of her 100th birthday which would have been on 18 November 2013. Prior to her death, she was the last surviving Ochberg Orphan in Cape Town. ‘Connections and
(Author: Clark Zlotchew, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025) The white-haired woman was inclined over four large plastic bowls of an expensive brand of cat food. Setting down a fifth one, she stroked the black and white cat’s back with her free hand. Several of