(Author: Solly Berger, Vol. 71, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2016)
Tikvat Israel – the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation (CTHC) – was founded in 1841. This makes it, after the Sydney Hebrew Congregation, the oldest Jewish congregation in the southern hemisphere.
Until the 17th Century, the history of Jewry was played out in the relatively confined geographical areas of the Middle East, North Africa and Eurasia. Beyond these regions it did not extend until, on the back of European colonial expansion, fledgling Jewish communities emerged in the Americas, Australasia and sub-Saharan Africa. The establishment of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation was thus part of a relatively recent expansion of Jewry under the aegis of the Dutch and British empires, which saw the first congregations established in North America in the 1650s and 1670s (Shearith Israel in New Amsterdam/New York and Yeshivat Israel in Newport), in South America in 1685 (Beracha v’Shalom in Paramaribo, Suriname), in Australia in 1828 (the Sydney Hebrew Congregation) and in New Zealand in 1843 (Beth Israel in Auckland).
In the case of the Cape, though a colonial settlement was founded by the Dutch East India Company in the mid 17th Cent u r y, t he Company did not allow any form of public worship other than Protestant Christianity. Thus, although some apparently Jewish names do appear in the Company’s records, it is clear that Judaism was not openly practised, if at all. The strange irony of these laws was that Dutch Jews, who eventually became the majority shareholders of the Company, never attempted to liberalise them. In contrast, the Dutch West India Company, which controlled the areas of what became New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware, always allowed freedom of worship.
This religious intolerance remained official policy at the Cape until 1804, when the Company’s short-lived successor Dutch regime, the Batavian Republic, inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution, removed the ban on religious freedom. Even then, the number of Jews at the Cape was so small that it was not until the 1830s that economic opportunities were able to draw sufficient Jews from Europe to achieve the critical mass needed to set up a congregation. A first attempt to do so in Grahamstown in 1838 did not get off the ground, while in Cape Town “several ineffectual attempts” were made “to collect a sufficient number of Israelites for the purpose of Divine worship according to the Mosaic Law, wherein it is commanded that no less than 10 Males of 13 years of age can constitute a congregation for general public prayers of Israelites.”
In this disappointing situation, the arrival in Cape Town in 1839 of Benjamin Norden, an enterprising and dynamic 1820 Settler from Grahamstown, with a record of public service there, seems to have been decisive in turning things around. On the eve of the Day of Atonement, 26 September 1841/5602, 14 men, 3 boys and, presumably, some women of the Jewish faith (though the male-blinkered records do not mention them) met in Norden’s house, Helmsley Place in Hof Street, and held a Kol Nidrei service in accordance with the Orthodox tradition. This site today forms part of the Mount Nelson Hotel complex. Eight days later, on 3 October (Chol Hamoed Sukkoth), 10 of these men met at the Loop Street house of another of the worshippers, Simeon Marcus, to take their hopeful initiative a step further by establishing the Society of the Jewish Community of Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, known in Hebrew as Tikvat Yisrael (‘Hope of Israel’). Very soon it followed this up with regular Shabbat and Festival services in the homes of its leading members. The fledgling congregation’s other initial step was that standard practice in new Jewish communities, the acquisition of land for a cemetery. Here it ran into Judaism’s still twilight status in official circles, for the new Municipality of Cape Town turned down its request for the customary free grant of land for a cemetery and instead required it to pay £10 for a plot on Somerset Road. Miffed at this refusal and at the proximity of the offered site to a slave cemetery – which it supposedly took as a sly reference to Jews being descended from slaves in Egypt – the congregation withdrew its application and instead used funds generated by the sale of land donated to it by an out-of-town supporter to purchase a burial plot in Woodstock. A stone wall was built around the new cemetery and a Ta h ara house erected, thanks to a donation from Norden. The first person to be buried there was one of the congregation’s founder members and trustees, the 41-year old Rhinelander Abraham Horn, who died in December 1844. His posthumously-born son, Charles, was the first child whose name was recorded in the new congregation’s register of Jewish births, in 1845.
Even before this, however, in June 1844, the first Jewish wedding in the Cape had taken place, between Amelia Marcus and Michael Benjamin. The alliance encountered a problem, primarily because no marriage officer existed in the Jewish community. It was resolved by requesting the Senior Colonial Chaplain of St Georges Cathedral, the Rev George Hough, to solemnise the marriage in a manner that would give no offence to Jewish religious susceptibilities. This arrangement received the consent of the Attorney-General, and all mention of the Holy Trinity and anything else objectionable to Jewish feeling was omitted. Thereafter, Mincha was read and a second marriage ceremony carried out, this time ‘according to our ancient Law of Moses and of Israel’.1
By 1847, the congregation’s membership had grown to 28 and, with the encouragement of the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, it was decided that the time had arrived to take the further steps of engaging a rabbi and securing a permanent place of worship. However Simeon Marcus, one of the pillars of the congregation, strongly disagreed, feeling that the community could not afford the likely expense, and accordingly resigned, taking with him his two sons and son-in-law. For a short period, he conducted his own separate services and Cape Town had two minyanim .
Meanwhile, led by Norden, the rest of the congregation set about raising the necessary funds to achieve their two goals. They did not limit their appeal just to Cape Town nor to Jews only. Within a year they had raised enough to purchase a house in Plein Street, but changed their minds when more suitable premises were found on the corner of St John’s and Bouquet Streets in Gardens, across the road from then under construction St Mary’s Cathedral. The two houses and adjoining store on the site were bought for £800 – this time the transfer fee was waived, suggesting that Judaism had at last been officially accepted as a legitimate religious denomination by the state – and the larger house was refurbished to form the synagogue.2 The building was formally consecrated on Shabbat eve, 15 September 1849, by the congregation’s first minister, the 46 year-old Reverend Isaac Pulver from Cheltenham, London, who had arrived the previous month.
The little synagogue served the congregation for the next 14 years, but this turned out to be a period when the ‘Hope of Israel’ flickered uncertainly. Falling membership and ructions, both internal and external, threatened to overwhelm the tiny congregation during these years.
Strife arose almost as soon as the new shul was opened. Benjamin Norden became deeply involved in the Anti-Convict Crisis of 1849-50, taking up a stance which won him great popular hostility, to the point of his being stoned by a mob in the street. By extension, this ill-feeling spilled over to his congregation, and a policeman had to be stationed in front of the shul during services to prevent any disturbances. The congregation was anything but supportive of Norden’s actions and, under the name of its president, placed the following notice in the press to distance itself from him:
No member of the Jewish persuasion with the exception of those already known have acted against the wishes of the people of this colony, nor have been implicated in anyway whatsoever to thwart any steps taken against the introduction of convicts. Though some malignant persona, out of mere malice, are exciting the public mind to condemn a whole community for the unworthy act of one or two, for conclusion I beg to say on behalf of the Jewish community, that they are grateful to their Christian brethren for the benevolence shown towards them in contributing so liberally to their cause.3
Nor was the financial situation comfortable, resulting in various methods being employed to raise income. The committee devised a Code of Laws (113 of them), whereby fines were issued for various transgressions. For instance: Taking off the talith or talking during the Services – 2/6d; Disturbing meetings – 5/-; Ignoring a notice to attend a Minyan – 5/-. This code of conduct irked many but was accepted until the congregation’s finances had improved sufficiently by the 1870s for it to be shelved.
The keeping of kashrut was a problem too. Reverend Pulver, who was also a shochet,performed the shechita with a butcher’s help. The problem of finding enough customers for purchasing the kashered meat made the exercise uneconomical, however. This produced friction between the minister and his congregation, leading to a split among the members. Added to a meagre salary and a barren Jewish environment in which to raise his children, it was too much for Pulver, who resigned after only two years. “My principal reasons for wanting to leave this congregation,” he wrote in despair, “are first, that I cannot get kosher meat; secondly, that I cannot as a Jewish parent bring up my children in a place where so little regard is paid to the principles of our Holy Religion; and thirdly, that notwithstanding nearly two years’ trial to live as economically as possible, I could not make my income meet my expenses”.4
Most debilitating of the problems facing the small congregation, however, was the loss of members through death, departure and lack of interest, and for several months at a time during the 1850s, no services could be held for want of a minyan. More than once in these years there was serious discussion about dissolving the faltering congregation, but the stronger personalities prevented this. At one of the few well-attended services, held in 1858, the son of Michael and Amelia Benjamin (the couple married in the two successive ceremonies back in 1844) celebrated the congregation’s first Barmitzvah.
From 1859, the efforts of the few stalwarts to keep the congregation going were powerfully supplemented by those of the vigorous and charismatic man eventually appointed to succeed Pulver, the 31-year old Reverend Joel Rabinowitz, formerly of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation. Rabinowitz did not spare himself in his efforts to breathe new life into the ailing community and, inspired by his enthusiasm, positive outlook and extraordinary fundraising ability – he was known both within the community and without as ‘The Great Beggar’ – the congregation grew in numbers and financial strength. He raised funds for the underprivileged and the needy and formed the Jewish Philanthropic Society, which in later years became the present Board of Guardians, and had the energy and the drive to visit Jews living in the outlying districts of the Colony.
On behalf of the struggling congregation itself, Rabinowitz issued a clarion call to his co-religionists throughout the Colony to rally to the support of the Mother Synagogue to save it from having to close its doors. So successful was this appeal that by 1861 he was able to declare that the time had come to replace the dilapidated and cramped Bouquet Street shul with a proper, custom-built synagogue. Swept up by his enthusiastic vision, the committee was quickly persuaded and later that year it bought, for the sum of £2200, a property for a new synagogue higher up St John’s Street. In designing it, the architect, James Hogg, ‘supposedly’ made a careful analysis of Solomon’s Temple in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and incorporated features derived from this study in the final plan. The new building was formally consecrated on 13 September 1863 – Erev Rosh Hashanah – and served the congregation for the next 42 years until being replaced by the Great Synagogue in 1905. Today, it houses the entrance to the SA Jewish Museum complex.
The second synagogue built by the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation. It was opened in September 1863 and served the congregation for the next 42 years.
From this buoyant beginning, the congregation never looked back, growing by leaps and bounds on the back of a wave of Jewish immigration. The earliest of these immigrants were young men drawn to southern Africa by the diamond and gold rushes of the 1870s and 1880s. They included such personalities as Samuel and Isaac Marks, Isaac Lewis and Barney Barnato, all of whom joined the congregation and attended services when in Cape Town.
Far more numerous and ultimately more significant in their impact on the CTHC was the second component of this influx of Jews, those ‘Great Migration’ Jews from the Lithuanian and Polish territories of the Russian Empire after 1881. Many of these remained in Cape Town after disembarking there, and joined the CTHC, despite its very alien English atmosphere under Rabinowitz’s unbending successor, the Reverend Abraham Ornstien.
Others trekked into the interior to sell their wares to the farmers as smouse, and in many instances established a store in the middle of nowhere, which became a trading centre for the surrounding farming community. Villages and even towns developed from these humble beginnings, a good example being De Aar, established by the Friedlander brothers, father and uncle of a later president and trustee of the Great Synagogue, C.K. Friedlander. There was also Garies in Namaqualand, founded by Maurice Eilenberg, who subsequently also moved to Cape Town where he become president of the Congregation and a major benefactor. As these two examples suggest, in the absence of congregations in these remote rural areas, many of these immigrants became ‘country members of the CTHC. With this surge in membership, the congregation prospered. Gas lighting was installed in the synagogue, which itself had to be enlarged. A mik vah was built. A second minister, Reverend F. Lyons was appointed and he also became theshochet. By 1891, there were nearly 1000 Jews living in Cape Town.
The following is an illuminating word-picture of the local scene in 1891 from the pen of a contemporary Capetonian:
Touching our co-religionists in Cape Town, they are a fairly representative and industrious body. We worship in a bijou synagogue, which pretty as it is, is indescribable architecturally, although it has some pretension to the Byzantine. Our noble selves may be described as consisting of two classes, those who attend shul and those who don’t. There are three sections – so to speak – among us. The highest are big shopkeepers, the second are the small shopkeepers and the lowest – well, we have no lowest. The conditions of life are eminently comfortable, and existence is not a very difficult problem with the majority Without egotism, we can claim the proud distinction of being a quiet, law abiding body, all more or less hard-working, following our respective pursuits with earnestness, if not with equal aptitude and results…..It is whispered that the royal road to ‘society’ is through the Cathedral. Hence a few, whom we can well spare, prefer society to the synagogue. Our Minister, the Rev. A F Ornstein, is a popular man amongst all sorts and conditions. He is distinct a Chazan, an intelligent lecturer, and thoroughly broadminded, in fact he is the right man in the right place….. The class who go to shul are honestly Orthodox, the Reform Movement not having gained ascendancy here yet…..5
In this booming environment, the congregation was able to expand its activities into Jewish education, and Rabinowitz’s twice-a-week classes for children in a room attached to the shul were by 1879 able to expand into a full cheder. Ornstien, who had long experience as a schoolteacher and headmaster in England, took this project even further, by establishing his own full-time Jewish school in 1884. This drew pupils from near and far as it had a hostel for boarders. By 1894 it had 80 pupils. After Ornstien’s death in 1895, it rapidly declined, and in 1896 was entirely superseded by the foundation by the congregation of its own Cape Town Hebrew Congregational Public School on the site of Hope Mill at the top of The Avenue. The driving force behind this initiative was Ornstein’s successor, Reverend Alfred Philipp Bender. Supported by such luminaries as Cecil Rhodes, Jan Hofmeyr and various churches, it flourished, and by 1902 it had 500 pupils in its high school and separate junior school.6 It was eventually taken over by the Cape School Board and lost its character as a Jewish school, eventually closing its doors in 1920. Reverend Bender proved to be an outstanding orator and scholar, and was soon also appointed as Professor of Hebrew at the South African College, the predecessor of UCT. However, though his Cambridge-polished erudition and very English demeanour might have been tailor-made for the Anglo-Jewish ethos of the CTHC, it gave him little appeal among the Lithuanian and Polish immigrants who had been streaming into the city since the 1880s. To them, he and it were alien, and the majority were disenchanted by the haughty treatment they received from the congregation, known to them, disparagingly, as the Einglische Shul. The culture that they brought from der heim was different and the feeling of landmanschaft – the people from the same shtetls – encouraged them to set up their own congregations from 1895. To name a few – the ultra-orthodox Beth Hamidrash in Constitution Street (1901), to become in later years the Vredehoek Shul; the New Hebrew Congregation (1895) in Roeland Street, later to move to Schoonder Street; the Ponevez Shul (1904) in Vandeleur Street, later to move to Maynard Street; the Chabad Congregation (1897) in Buitenkant Street, afterwards in Virginia Avenue and today in Arthurs Road, Sea Point, though no longer a Chassidishe congregation; and many other shtieblach in rented rooms.
To this swelling community, the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 added thousands of Jews, uitlander refugees from the Transvaal Republic, who temporarily doubled the local Jewish population to 10 000. Their sudden arrival in Cape Town in October 1899 raised many problems, for many of them had nothing but the clothes on their backs. Led by Bender, the congregation and the rest of the Cape Town Jewish community helped feed and house them. Their presence also put further pressure on an already overcrowded shul, and during the High Festivals there was not enough seating to accommodate them. A Joint Festival Services Committee was formed comprising three representatives each from the CTHC, the Witwatersrand Old Hebrew Congregation and the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation. The Good Hope Hall was utilised for overflow services. Similar arrangements were also made at the Sea Point Town Hall. Rabbi Dr Hertz, minister of the Witwatersrand Old Hebrew Congregation, preached at both centres, while Reverend Bender also officiated at several overflow services.
The St John’s Street shul was by now bursting at the seams and, at the end of hostilities, plans were drawn up to build the Great Synagogue. The new shul, with sufficient seating to accommodate 1500 persons, was designed by the architects Parker and Forsythe and built for the princely sum of £26 000. It was formally opened on 13 September 1905 by CTHC President Hyman Liberman, who at the same time was also Mayor of Cape Town, the first Jew to occupy this office. The little community’s standing in the city had come far indeed since the Municipality of Cape Town had refused its application for a free grant of land for a cemetery 63 years earlier. 1905 thus forms an end and a beginning of an epoch in the history of the CTHC and of Cape Town Jewry.
Dignitaries gathering for the consecration of the Great Synagogue, 13 September 1905
In conclusion, an interesting assessment: Had the immigration of Jews ceased in 1860, little might have remained of the early communities in South Africa. Indeed, today there are no Jewish descendants left of the men who founded Tikvat Israel i n 1841. Those that arrived in the mass migrations in subsequent years brought with them an organised entity with warm-heartedness, generosity and practical-mindedness. All combined into a culture that has endured and made the South African Jewish community a special segment and influence in the world of Jewry.
NOTES
1 Herrman, L, A History of the Jews in South Africa, from the earliest times to 1895 (London, 1930), p121.
2 Today the land is occupied by Belvedere House, and forms part of the parliamentary complex, but a plaque marks the site, recording the presence there of the first synagogue in Southern Africa.
Solly Berger is a long-serving member of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation committee. He was centrally involved in the events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the congregation in 1991 and the centenary of the Great Synagogue in 2005. This article originally appeared in the brochure produced for the latter occasion, and has been adapted for publication in this issue.
NOTES
3 Herrman, A History of the Jews in South Africa, p153.
4 Ibid, p173.
5 Abrahams, I, The Birth of a Community, Cape Town, 1955, pp51.
6 Ibid, pp92-3
