(Author: Rose Norwich, Vol. 68, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2013)
Following this year’s centenary celebrations of the Great Synagogue in Wolmarans Street, it is now more generally known that the first congregation to be established in Johannesburg was the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation. It was formed in 1888 and built the President Street Synagogue, opened in 1889. Recently, the foundation stone of that building has been placed into the front wall of the Great Park Synagogue in Houghton, along with the other stones of subsequent congregations to commemorate those earlier buildings. The well-known Saron & Hotz history The Jews of South Africa includes a chapter on ‘The Transvaal Congregations’ by Chief Rabbi LI Rabinowitz, who remarks on “other congregations springing up” from this congregation.1
In a 1949 article on the early years of Johannesburg Jewry Samuel Rochlin, a prominent figure in South African Jewish historiography, described how soon after the founding of the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation it split, with many of its members moving away.2 He was referring to the well-known split which occurred in December 1891 and lasted until 1915. At the time it caused many members of the congregation to leave to form the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation (JHC) and build the Park Synagogue. Those who left on that occasion were unhappy with the reappointment of Rev Mark L Harris. This story has been told many times recently and is described in detail in the new hard cover book by David Saks on the Great Park Synagogue, published this year.3 The President Street and Park synagogues catered largely, but not exclusively, for German and English Jews, who were the first to come to Johannesburg and the Reef to make their fortunes following the discovery of gold.
There were actually two splits from the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation in 1891.This article is about the first such split, which occurred shortly before the JHC was formed. This split was for ideological reasons.
The Eastern European Jews, immigrants from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, did not feel at home in the rather formal atmosphere of the President Street Synagogue. The service was also not considered sufficiently orthodox by them. The history books tell us that those who left felt that the President Street Synagogue was “too English”. Gwynne Schrire, a frequent contributor to these pages, is currently writing a book about her great-grandfather, Yehuda Leib Schrire, who was too religious for the community at the Park Synagogue although he had been employed there as a kosher slaughterer and Kashrut supervisor in 1892.
The forebears of South African Jewry are largely those who came to the country from Eastern Europe. These were the members who left the President Street Synagogue on this occasion and formed the new Johannesburg Orthodox Hebrew Congregation (JOHC) in 1891 in Ferreirastown.4 The JOHC rented the residence of Harry Filmer at 42 Fox Street for a few years until their own premises were ready.5 They used the Filmer house from around 1891–1893.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] The first JOHC synagogue in Fox Street In February 1893 Samuel Nathanson, Bernard Wainstein, Jacob Kark and Symon (Chaim) Kuper, all Trustees of the JHOC, bought a site in Fox Street in their own names for the sum of £550.6This was Stand 18 Ferreirastown, purchased from the original owner of the property since the proclamation of the suburb, Elizabeth Phoebe Doble. There was a small house on it, perhaps one of the usual houses of the time. It was a single storey building with a central passage and rooms on both sides. These trustees virtually donated the property in 1895 to later trustees of the same property, by charging only £5 for the ground and building.7 AP (Paul) Menze, who had come to the Transvaal from Germany in 1885, was appointed to do the alterations to the house. One of the partnership of Menze and Brauer who submitted the original drawings for the Park Synagogue, he had not been considered sufficiently qualified to complete that building but was appointed as Clerk of Works at the time and asked to find a proper architect to finish the job. At that stage Menze had found John Frederick Kroll, an accomplished German architect who had been in South Africa since 1881. He completed the Park Synagogue, its school and the Minister’s house. Paul Menze appears to have managed this small job of altering the Fox Street house, making it into a place of worship, quite well. He demolished the front portion of the interior walls, leaving two small rooms at the back of the building which were probably used for classrooms. A staircase was erected on the side to reach the small women’s gallery above. In order to accommodate this and to give sufficient headroom he added 0.6m to the height of the walls, put on a new corrugated iron roof and included a roof light.8 The new hall formed was 11.3 metres long by 8.5 metres wide. The JHC community paid for the erection of the first public mikveh in Johannesburg, which was placed behind the small house on the rear boundary of the property.9 On 1 December 1892, Menze submitted the plans to the Johannesburg Council. These are fortunately safely housed in Museum Africa (erroneously called “The Jewish School”, which caused much difficulty in recognising them). On 1 February 1893, the building was completed. The Beth Hamedrash, according to the London Jewish Chronicle, was “a large room, capable of holding 250 to 300 worshippers, with white washed walls, a small gallery for ladies on one side, the Almemar (Bimah) in the centre, the Ark in the East, and was furnished with wooden benches. Only the actual necessary requirements were provided, nothing was spent on superfluous decoration”.10 The building was completed and officially opened on 1 February 1893, when the scrolls of the law were carried from their former place of worship in Filmer’s house to the new building.11 Both Mark Harris, Minister of the President Street Synagogue and Harris Isaacs, Minister of the Park Synagogue, took part in the consecration service. The following description of the activity in the building was given in one of the local newspapers: It was open from early morning till late at night. As soon as a sufficient number were present, prayers were read. When these were finished room was made for a batch of newcomers, who went through an exactly similar ceremony. This procedure was repeated an indefinite number of times every day …..The study of Torah seemed to be part and parcel of existence, and groups were collected in different parts of the building studying Talmud or Mischna…..12 The second Beth Hamedrash synagogue, in use from the end of 1912 until circa. 1947 The congregation used this building until the number of immigrants increased to such an extent that it was unable to contain all the worshippers. Eventually, in 1906 the congregation had saved save enough money to buy, for £3000, the stand next door.13 It was several years before they started building the new synagogue on the two stands. The old building was demolished in 1912 when the new building was started. It is probably at this time also that the Sunday Times article on “Vanishing Johannesburg” carried the only photograph of the first Beth Hamedrash. Although it is a very poor photograph, it appears as if the front of the building had a gable end. Perhaps in later years a further extension was carried out.14The mikveh was the only building which remained after the small building was demolished. J F Kroll was appointed to design the new Beth Hamedrash. He had become the man who supposedly “knew about Jewish buildings”; by this time he had also designed and completed the Fordsburg Synagogue, opened by Max Langerman in 1906.15 uncil’s records. But in Museum Africa, in the same place where the plan of the little house was kept, there was a lovely original plan drawn by Kroll himself, showing his design for this new building. The plan shows the ark facing north and so we know that it was designed around the same time as the Wolmarans Street building, which was considered the first building to have a north facing ark. Chief Rabbi Dr JL Landau, of the Park Synagogue, had pointed out the fact that all previous Johannesburg synagogues had the ark facing east as if in Europe. The ark pointing north towards Jerusalem was in the contract for the Wolmarans Street building. Kroll submitted his plan in 1912 for the building, to cost £6,000, and the foundation stone was laid by IW Schlesinger on 9 June 1912.16 It was officially opened on 8 December 1912 by Gustave Imroth, an important Jewish Randlord, and consecrated by Rabbi Landau.17 The plans for the synagogue in Wolmarans Street, designed by Theophile Schaerer, had been submitted to the City Council in February 1913. The foundation stone was laid on 3 September 1913 by Siegfried Raphaely18 and the building was opened on 23 August 1914 by Rabbi Landau.19The two buildings were built virtually at the same time. However, nobody today remembers the Beth Hamedrash in Fox Street because it was destroyed without record. What a shameful situation! The story of the construction of the Beth Hamedrash and some of the history of the building was published in my article on early synagogues in the Pesach 2003 issue of Jewish Affairs. Present-day readers then probably learned about this building for the first time. There is no photographic record of the interior and it is not possible to reconstruct how it looked inside. The plans, however, show quite clearly the rectangular space for men. The women’s gallery was comparatively small and stretched across the rear of the building. It was placed over the prayer or class rooms below. The main hall was 23.7m x 15.8m and seated 470 men and 214 women.20 Even the company that demolished the building kept no records of it. This is especially sad as it was the lovely Anglo-American Corporation buildings in Fox Street that replaced it. The curator of their archives was shame-faced that such a thing had happened. Fortunately, CA Stoloff had taken two photographs of the exterior before it was demolished (in c1947). We are greatly indebted to him for otherwise there would have been no visual record of its outside appearance. It was a building greatly loved by its congregation and was affectionately known as the Greener Beth Hamedrash. Rabbi Moshel Friedman, a most learned man, remained in office there for many years. He served on the Beth Din with Rabbis Landau and Lipschitz. The congregation also had a very active Talmud Torah. In 1916, it purchased two stands only one block from the synagogue at the corner of Fox and Maclaren Streets, Marshallstown, to build a Talmud Torah.21 It was here that the Jews who had come from Eastern Europe sent their children to learn Hebrew and Jewish religious studies. But as the years progressed the community began to move out of Ferreirastown to Fordsburg and further afield to Doornfontein, where there was water. The numbers had diminished to such an extent that at a meeting of the school on 17 June 1928, a decision was taken ‘to move to a more Jewish populated locality’. The following year, the school was sold to New Mines Ltd for £7000.22 The money received was used to buy stands in Doornfontein for a total of £3900.23 This is where the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol was built. It is interesting to note that while the minutes of the synagogue changed from being written in Yiddish to English in 1912, for the sale of the school all the documents were written in Yiddish and had to be translated by a sworn translator. In 1947, the Anglo-American Corporation started to buy up all the land in the block in Fox Street for a new headquarters. The two stands on which the synagogue stood were part of the property they wanted and were transferred to the First Johannesburg Orthodox Hebrew Congregation (FJOHC) for ease of selling.24 At this time, there was an unpleasant dispute between some members of the congregation and the Beth Hamedrash about the ownership of the buildings. This was eventually resolved after taking the matter to court. The Fox Street property was sold for £110 00026 and the building was demolished in 1947. The Gevra Mischna U’Gemara (Brotherhood Society to study the Oral Law) had started at the synagogue in 1892 and was the oldest Jewish cultural society on the Reef.25 It moved to Doornfontein into a separate building on the site in Saratoga Avenue when the next synagogue was built there. Sadly, the Beth Hamedrash building no longer exists and while present-day Johannesburg Jewry celebrated the centenary of the Wolmarans Street Synagogue, none of them remember the lovely building in Fox Street. The synagogue in Wolmarans Street was sold and could not be demolished because of the ban on the demolition of buildings older than 50 years by the then National Monuments Council – now SARHA. Those requirements came into existence well after the Fox Street building was destroyed. The new Doornfontein Beth Hamedrash Hagodol was built and designed by Saul Margo and functioned in Saratoga Avenue from 1931 to 195326 at the same time as the Greener Beth Hamedrash was still functioning in Fox Street. In 1953 they amalgamated completely when all the worshippers moved to Doornfontein. In 1949, the FJOHC purchased a small house for services in Yeoville. This rIn 1986, for the 100th anniversary of Johannesburg, the Federation of Synagogues plaqued the site of several old synagogues, including the one in Fox Street. Unfortunately, the latter’s site was incorrectly plaqued, with the wrong name of the congregation and wrong stand. Whether it was corrected in response to the ensuing protests is not known.emained in use until it was gutted by fire in 1998.27 As the years passed, Doornfontein was no longer a residential suburb and people were leaving for the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. The Doornfontein Beth Hamedrash Hagodol closed. In 1980, the buildings were sold to the Radha Saomi Association Beas for £60 00028and the money from the sale was later used to build the Beth Hamedrash in Sandton. The Beth Hamedrash Hagodol building is presently used by the Technical College in Doornfontein. The building of synagogues follows the formation of Jewish communities, and when the congregants move away the buildings become redundant. In large towns and cities they are often destroyed and the site used for more modern buildings. In country towns, when there are no more Jews to look after them, the buildings are often used for completely different purposes or demolished. At present, there is almost nothing left in Johannesburg to save. In the central city, only the Poswohl Synagogue remains, and even though it sports a National Monument plaque it has been desecrated on several occasions. All the synagogues in Doornfontein, except for the Doornfontein Synagogue of 1905 (the ‘Lions Shul’) have been destroyed. There used to be nine buildings in the area. The Malvern Synagogue is a church. The Bertrams Synagogue is used as a home. In the Southern Suburbs, the tiny Turfontein Synagogue in Hay Street has gone though various usages according to who is the owner. Only the Rosettenville Synagogue is still the same small beautiful building, thanks to the family who have looked after it for years. In recent times newer buildings, such as the Yeoville and Berea synagogues, have fallen into disuse and need to be protected. It is too late now to save most of the early synagogue buildings, but let us not be so negligent in the future. A major building like the Greener Beth Hamedrash can never be replaced. It should never have been demolished without leaving any trace. Rose Norwich has researched and published widely in the field of little-known South African history. An eminent architectural historian, she is the acknowledged authority on the history of early Johannesburg synagogues. Her many years of Jewish communal involvement include serving as President of the Union of Jewish Women and as co-coordinator of the current SA Friends of Beth Hatefutsoth research project on Jewish life in the South African country communities. 
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