(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 76, #3, Spring 2021) In February 1966, the apartheid government announced that it was going to apply the Group Areas Act to District Six, a suburb with a long history of mixed race residence. Esther Wilkin who grew up
(Author: Zita Nurok, Vol. 76 * No. 3 * Spring 2021) Roodepoort’s small shul building was the place that held our community of approximately sixty Jewish families together. There were families that originated in Eastern Europe, from places such as Lithuania and Poland and
(Author: Steven Mark Katzew, Vol. 76 * No. 2 * Autumn-Winter 2021) But for the advent of the Covid 19 pandemic, my father-in-law Harold Levy would still have been practicing as an optometrist in his 91st year. The unexpected termination of a lifetime commitment to
(Author: David Saks, Vol. 76 * No. 2 * Autumn-Winter 2021) The untimely passing last November of veteran journalist, author and Jewish communal professional Suzanne Belling was yet another sad loss for South African Jewry in a year that had already seen – whether
(Author: Dominique Malherbe, Vol. 76 * No. 2 * Autumn-Winter 2021) The following extract is taken from 23-27 of Searching for Sarah: the Women Who Loved Langenhoven by Dominique Malherbe, Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021. JA thanks Tafelberg for permission to include here. One of
(Author: Ivan P Kapelus, Vol. 76 * No. 2 * Autumn-Winter 2021) Introduction I crave your indulgence! I would like to start this discussion in the middle, as it were, by quoting from a four thousand-word article by Dr H F Verwoerd (later National
(Author: David Saks, Vol. 75 * No. 4 * Spring 2020) Of all South Africa’s minority groups, the Jewish community is “among the most thoroughly dissected and psychoanalysed” observes Irwin Manoim at the beginning of Mavericks Inside the Tent – The Progressive Jewish movement
(Author: Irwin Manoim, Vol. 75 * No. 4 * Spring 2020) On a Tuesday afternoon in early May this year, Rabbi Andre Ungar, aged 90, settled down for his afternoon nap. He never got up, dying peacefully in his sleep. Due to Covid19 lockdown
(Author: Boris Gorelik Vol. 75 * No. 4 * Spring 2020) The beginnings of the rooibos trade, one of the youngest tea industries in the world, were undistinguished. South Africans saw rooibos as an ersatz tea for the lower classes. Its quality was inconsistent,
(Author: Kathy Munro, Vol. 75 * No. 4 * Spring 2020) Art publishing impresario and photographer Helen Aron, who passed away in Johannesburg on 11 January 2020, was a unique Johannesburg character. A documentary and art photographer of Johannesburg’s disappearing past and a woman