(Reviewer: David Saks, Vol. 66, No. 1, Pesach 2011)
Currently nearing completion is a comprehensive new history of the Jewish community of South West Africa/Namibia. When it appears, hopefully later this year, one of those featuring in it will be the distinguished lawyer, historian and human rights activist Israel Goldblatt. Given the broader nature of the project, of course, no more than a brief outline of his life and career can be expected. Fortunately, the recent publication of Israel Goldblatt – Building Bridges has made possible a more in-depth appreciation of this noteworthy individual.
Combining a fuller biographical essay alongside an anthology of his writings on a wide range of subjects, this book should be of particular interest to students of Namibian history and culture for the light it sheds on the formative decades leading up to the country’s becoming independent. It was prepared for publication by Dag Henrichsen and two of Goldblatt’s children, Naomi Jacobson and Karen Blum-Marshall, following the discovery after his death of the extensive notes he made on legal and political issues he was involved in. A number of these notes, which are explained and contextualised by the main narrative, appear in the book, as do examples of Goldblatt’s correspondence with leading Namibian nationalists of the day.
The book’s main title alludes to Goldblatt’s lifelong commitment to establishing bridges of friendship and understanding across the colour line, and indeed across all ethnic, religious or political divides. In a quiet, unassuming way, he was able to play an effective role in his country’s emergence from racially oppressive foreign rule to sovereign, non-racial democracy. The main title is followed by a lengthy list of subtitles referring to people Goldblatt interacted with, viz. “Namibian Nationalists/ Clemens Kapuuo/Hosea Kutako/Brendan Simbwaye/Samuel Witbooi”. This comes across as clumsy and confusing, unfortunately. It would have been far better for the editors to have entitled the book Israel Goldblatt – Building Bridges and left it at that. Building Bridges is essentially a study of Israel Goldblatt’s career as a lawyer and scholar, as illustrated by his own private writings and correspondence. It deals with such subjects as his involvement with the South West Africa Mandate question, his legal defence of various black Namibian nationalist activists such as Chief Hosea Kutako, Captain, Rev. Samuel Witbooi and Brendan
Kangongolo Simbwaye and his studies of local black history, culture and ethnography. His writings testify to his insatiable intellectual curiosity, broadmindedness and scrupulous sense of fairness that unfailingly characterised his professional conduct in the legal field. An example of the latter was how he campaigned on behalf of German families whose menfolk had been interned or expelled on suspicion of being pro-Nazi. Inter alia, he lobbied the SWA Administration to grant tax relief to German wives struggling to keep their husbands’ businesses and farms going in their husbands’ absence and wrote to the South African Prime Minister motivating for the repatriation to Namibia those German men who in his view were innocent.
Some of Goldblatt’s writings refer to the activities of a study group he established around 1960, which met regularly at his home to debate recent events at the United Nations, with particular reference to Namibia. These activities, as well as his interaction with such anti-apartheid campaigners as Ruth First, made him the object of suspicion to the security police and resulted in his coming under close surveillance for many years.
Yiddish scholars will also be particularly interested to learn that Goldblatt was the second son of David Goldblatt, a pioneer of the Yiddish press in South Africa who went on to achieve international fame for his two-volume Yiddish Encyclopaedia. Despite never seeing his father again after he relocated (sans his family) to the United States in 1915, Israel kept up a regular correspondence with him, and also sent him money, until his death in 1945. David Goldblatt’s oldest daughter, Sarah, has her own place in South African history as the personal secretary (in reality, a great deal more than that) and later literary executrix of the famed poet and pioneer of the Afrikaans language C J Langenhoven. Jacobson and Blum-Marshall have themselves enjoyed distinguished careers, the first as an internationally renowned sculptress and the second as a Senior Council who became the first woman judge to be appointed in South West Africa/Namibia.
Dag Henrichsen, Naomi Jacobson, Karen Blum Marshall (eds), Israel Goldblatt – Building BridgesNamibian Nationalists, Clemens Kapuuo, Hosea Kutako, Brendan Simbwaye, Samuel Witbooi”, Basler Afrika Bibliographien – Basel, 2010, pp140
David Saks is Associate Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and Editor of Jewish Affairs.
