(Vol. 71, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2016)
This year, a number of commemorative events have been held to mark 175 years of Jewish communal life in South Africa. Inter alia, it was the keynote theme of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies Gauteng Council conference, at which the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth Ephraim Mirvis was keynote speaker. Rabbi Mirvis was himself born and raised in South Africa. He is just one of scores of rabbis of local origin who today occupy pulpits throughout the Jewish world, something that the handful of pioneers who came together to form the first minyan in Cape Town back in 1841 would have regarded as unthinkable.
This Rosh Hashanah 2016 issue of Jewish Affairs (which this year itself is celebrating an anniversary, its 75th) is devoted to looking back at the last eighteen decades or so of what SA Jews have accomplished, both as Jews and as members of the greater society. It begins with what is (almost) a year-by-year photographic portrait of how the community has developed, using in the main images sourced from the archives of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and SA Zionist Federation. It is followed by a section looking at some of the main regions where Jewish life developed, viz. Cape Town, Eastern Cape, Johannesburg and the rural areas and smaller country towns. The concluding section looks at specific areas of Jewish endeavour – politics, the rabbinate, law and the arts.
Taken as a whole, South Africa has been good to its Jewish citizens. Even during the pre-World War II period, when antisemitic sentiment reached an all-time high, Jews were never officially discriminated against (albeit that legislation was passed specifically aimed at limiting further Jewish immigration). For their own part, Jews have played a hugely disproportionately large role in the development of the country (even, to a more limited extent, in the sporting spheres. So far as this community is concerned, at least, the old joke about the world’s thinnest book being the history of great Jewish athletes has not applied).
South Africa has had a turbulent past, and in the contemporary era continues to be confronted with serious challenges, including widespread poverty and unemployment, social and political unrest, corruption at the highest levels of government and economic stagnation. On the positive side its liberal democratic foundations have stood firm since the memorable transition from white minority rule to multiracial democracy in April 1994. The results of the recent local government elections, in which the political opposition made significant gains and overall gave politics in the country a much-needed shake-up, have also fostered a renewed sense of optimism. As Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein has pointed out, the great thing about democracies is that they are self-correcting; the people at large always have the opportunity of, in a peaceful and orderly fashion, affecting change when necessary, an option denied to those living in dictatorships.
In the 1980s, when South Africa appeared to be in terminal decline, anyone who predicted that thirty years hence, its Jewish community would be celebrating its 175th anniversary would have been regarded as a hopeless optimist. In those days, doomsday predictions over the prospects for SA Jewry were a staple item in the international global Jewish press.
To illustrate how we were seen back then, the editor remembers how a rabbi taking a beginners Talmud class in Jerusalem posed the hypothetical question, “Now suppose Mr Saks from Johannesburg wanted to sell his house….” and all the Brits and Americans present gave me knowing looks and sniggered. As the grim joke went back then, the definition of a South African patriot was someone who couldn’t sell his house.
Perhaps even then there was a tendency both to overstate the extent of this country’s problems, and to underrate the ability of its people to overcome them. At any rate, South Africa confounded the nay-sayers by making a successful transition to multiracial democracy. The 20th Century’s turbulent final decades nevertheless did take its toll on the Jewish community, which during that period lost around one-third of its members to emigration. Today, the Jewish population is estimated at being between 70 and 80 000 souls, 90% of whom live in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Despite its reduced numbers, however, SA Jewry in 2016 is experiencing something of a golden age. Never have levels of Jewish learning, identification and general involvement been higher, a fact that other Diaspora communities, most of whom are struggling to turn the tide of assimilation, acknowledge with admiration, and not a little envy. Having reached this milestone, the Jews of South Africa can therefore be forgiven for indulging in a little chest-thumping for all that they and their predecessors have achieved. L’Shana Haba B’Yerushalayim!
David Saks (Editor)
