(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 81, #1, Autumn-Winter 2026) Said Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, “There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty, but the crown of a good name is above them all [1].” Sir Moses
(Author: Zita Nurok, Vol. 81, #1, Autumn-Winter 2026) We lived across the road from the railway track. I often could be found standing at the fence watching people in the passenger trains going back and forth between Johannesburg and our small town of
(Reviewer: David Saks, Vol. 80, #2, Summer 2025) As the adage has it, “many hands make light work”, and that is true of many things. It is not always so, however, when it comes to writing community histories, where it can all too
(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: 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: 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
[Reviewer: David Saks, Vol 79, #2, Summer 2024) I may be sticking my neck out here, but it may well be that no other Jewish community anywhere has gone about recording its own history with as much avidity as that of South Africa’s. It
(Author: David Saks, Vol. 79, #2, Summer, 2024) As the truism goes, South African Jewry is a primarily a community of Lithuanian origin, and while it inevitably needs much qualifying, that is substantially true. During the half century roughly commencing in the early 1880s,
(Author: Zita Nurok, Vol. 79, #2, Summer 2024) The small building before me had become a panel-beating business. But the tell-tale symbol on its roof brought me back to my childhood days, and my growing-up years in the town. The Magen David on the
(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 78, #3, Spring-Summer 2023) The wandering Jews have always been on the move, usually fleeing persecution, prejudice and poverty, searching for security and a better economic future. They first moved into the Democratic Republic of the Congo in