(Author: Wilf Stein, Vol. 80, #1, Autumn 2025)
The town of Sutherland lies in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It has the reputation of being the coldest town in South Africa. As a descendant of a Sutherland family once wrote, “the water freezes to ice in the taps. “. One basis for the cold is the town’s location high in the western Roggeveld mountains in the Karoo, but another is that the sky is so clear. And that is why the SALT (Southern Latitude Astronomical Telescope) is located in Sutherland. The presence of this telescope is one reason why tourism is such a strong part of the economic basis of Sutherland and why there are so many places offering accommodation in and around the town. Another attraction is the ancient cemetery just outside the town. Within that cemetery is a small Jewish cemetery, and it is this that is the focus of our story.
The general cemetery has some 275 graves. The Small Jewish Communities Association (Small Jewish Communities Association – SA) has recently surveyed it and found 11 Jewish graves, seven of which have tombstones. Four of these were renovated and photographs published. A previous survey by the Genealogical Society of South Africa had photographed four of the tombstones of the Jewish graves:
The survey of the Small Jewish Communities Association added one to this collection (that of the late W. Frank – who was not resident in Sutherland but rather in Fraserburg, 170 km distant) and supplied a translation of the “Unreadable Jewish grave” pictured above.
The upper two gravestones in the pictures above are on the graves of the two ritual slaughterers (shochatim) of the town, Wolf Smilg and Reverend Menachem Mendel Spitz. The bottom left is that of Barnett Perlman, the founder member of the Perlman family which will be discussed in detail further on. And here is the mystery that we mean to solve: Why should there be two slaughterers to service so small a Jewish population? I will develop this riddle’s explanation in detail since it provides the history of this somewhat isolated Jewish community.
Who were these two shochatim? The first to arrive was Reverend Spitz. I have a record of the shipping manifest for his journey on the Dover Castle that left Southampton for Cape Town on 18 May 1910. His occupation is listed as “slaughterer”. Menachem Mendel Spitz was born in 1885. His father Moshe Spitz, who died in Kretinga in the far west of Lithuania, is described on Menachem’s gravestone as “ha Rav Hagadol” – the great rabbi – while his mother was from Plunge (Plungian). Menachem settled in Sutherland, finding a house on Primrose Street. He was joined in July 1912 by his wife Chaya and their two children, listed on the shipping manifest of the Dover Castle as Samuel and Moses. The happy reunion was short-lived as Menachem died on 18 January 1913. The cause of death was given as pneumonia and his occupation as “Hebrew slaughterer”. Listed on the probate (signed by his wife, in Cape Town, in 1915) are three children, Max, Maurice and Mendel. The latter, named after his father, was posthumous, born on 13 March 1913. Maurice is presumably the “Samuel” shown on the 1912 shipping manifest. Chaya later married Benjamin Grolman in Johannesburg in 1944.
Menachem Mendel’s successor as shochet, Wolf Smilg, was born in Vidukle, in the east of Lithuania, in 1892. He left Southampton (also on the Dover Castle) on 11 October 1912, his occupation likewise listed as “slaughterer”. I have wondered about the timing of his recruitment. Did the growing Sutherland Jewish community already feel the need for a second shochet, or was Menachem Mendel’s health failing so that he could not do the work? Most probably, Smilg came to South Africa to look for work and was already there when Reverend Spitz died.
Who were these Jewish families who had come to settle in Sutherland? The other two graves shown in the figure provide a substantial part of the answer. We know a great deal about Barnett (sometimes Burnard) Perlman since one of his sons, Hayim Perlman, has left us a fine memoir on which I have based this story. Barnett arrived in South Africa as a young man of 29 at the very end of 1894. According to his son’s memoir, he was met at the boat by a welcoming committee that included a Mr Jacob Cohen, a “landsleit” (coming from the same part of Lithuania as Barnett). Mr Cohen as Hayim Perlman writes “set about organising things for my father and in no time he was equipped with a cart and horse which enabled him to go as a “smous” [peddler] amongst the farmers in the district selling his goods. My father was a religious man who read the Bible every day and got on very well with the farmers. With the assistance of friends, he was soon established in Sutherland as a shopkeeper, a general dealer and produce dealer”.
Some Jews from Lithuania had previously settled in the up-country of the Cape and married local Afrikaner women. This was unsettling for the mother Jewish community back in Cape Town, which proceeded to arrange for young women who needed husbands to come to South Africa to marry the previously arrived bachelors. As the family legend has it, Barnett came to Cape Town to meet the boat carrying some of these intended brides: “Our grandfather went down to the docks on that fateful day. Ouma had been designated for someone else, but when he saw her (and she saw him?) he walked away with his wife-to-be. Their wedding took place in the Gardens synagogue in Cape Town at the beginning of 1900. That is how Sarah Zipporah Polahetzky became ‘Ouma’ the progenitor of the Perlman family”. Their children were all born in Sutherland: Esther in 1901, Annie in 1903, David Louis in 1905, Leah in 1907, Hayim in 1909, Rebecca in 1911 and Perl in 1913.
When Barnett went to the births registration office in Sutherland in 1909, he announced that his new child’s name was Chaim Joseph (after Barnett’s late father), but the registration officer did not know how to spell the first name. Working in the office, however, was a woman who knew Hebrew. H A Y I M she said, and that is the name that Hayim always used, rather than the conventional Chaim or Hyman. Indeed, Hayim is what the Jewish Publication Society uses in their “Ez Hayim Torah and Commentary”. Below is a copy of the birth certificate issued to Barnett and Hayim on that day:
Barnett had a sister Zelda (affectionately known as Zlatte) who came to Sutherland with her four sons, Benjamin Hirsh, Mordecai (known as Max), Michael and Lionel. Benjamin and Max joined Barnett in the business that became known as Perlman and Stein.
Mordecai married his cousin Rachel Mervis (their mothers both being sisters of Barnett) in Sutherland in 1908. Of Benjamin, his daughter Nancy wrote, “My Dad, Bennie Stein served on the Sutherland Town council and was known and loved by all as Oom Bennie. He spoke a suiwer Afrikaans”. [“Oom” is Afrikaans for uncle, a true uncle or else used in an affectionate sense, while “suiwer” is “pure”, i.e. fluent]. In Sutherland they had an old country house with a tennis court and a dam in which they could swim in summertime”. The brothers ran a general dealer store and were also involved in smousing [itinerant peddling] and sheep speculating, traveling long distances from farm to farm”.
The business, Perlman and Stein, did well. Barnett built himself a fine house on Commercial Road, now called Piet Retief Street. The house has been well preserved and provides excellent bed and breakfast accommodation.
The other major Jewish family in Sutherland were the Blochs. We know of them from the transcription and translation of the inscription on the fourth grave in the picture above, the one simply labelled “Jewish grave”. The translation reads: “Our dear son, outstanding student of Torah and in teaching and excellent in his moral values: Noah Leib son of Aharon Bloch. He was born on 5th Tammuz 5658 in Vabalninkas in the province of Kaunas, Russia. He was taken from us on 8 Nissan 5675 in the sixteenth year of his life“. [Thus, he was born 25 June 1898 and died 23 March 1915]. A search on JewishGen found the Blochs in Vabalninkis, Lithuania, as Aaron and Sarah, with their children Sheine, Noah Leib, Chonel and Mendel. Aaron and Sarah’s 1895 marriage record could also be found. Aaron’s brother Nathan was already in South Africa in 1901, and Aaron was there by 1903. Sarah and the children followed Aaron only in 1912, by which time the business of Bloch Brothers, dealing in livestock, was already well established, also in Commercial Street.
Hayim Perlman left us this wonderful photograph, by Philip Helman of Vleiland, Laingsberg, showing the children of the Perlman and Bloch families with their teacher:
Hayim himself is the charming little boy in the middle of the bottom row, holding his book in his hands. I have identified the other children from their birth years and gender but may have made mistakes. Since Hayim was born in 1909, we can date the photograph as probably taken in 1914. The teacher must thus be Rev Wolf Spilg, since Menachem Mendel Spitz had died in January 1913. Hayim Perlman remembered that Rev Spilg lived in the Perlman house as a bachelor, paying for his rent by being the community’s Hebrew teacher. The Bloch’s eldest son, Noach Leib, was perhaps too old to be with these young children, his gravestone giving his age as sixteen when he died in March 1915.
Other relatives of the Perlman family joined them in Sutherland. These were the Millmans and the Ormans, cousins of the Perlmans. The Millmans were related through Barnett’s mother, a Millman, and the Ormans through Barnett’s father. I have a marriage record of Yetta Millman marrying Abraham Orman in Sutherland in October 1913, with both members of the couple being recorded as residing in the town. A witness to the wedding signed himself as M. Stein. This was Mordecai Stein, a cousin to both members of the couple.
But this little community was not to last very much longer. Barnett Perlman died in the Spanish Flu pandemic on 14 November 1918 while Rev Spilg died just four days later. Seven graves in the non-Jewish community were also filled in the last half of 1918.
Soon after Barnett’s death, the Perlman properties were sold, and the widow Sarah moved to Cape Town. She settled at 1 Milner Road in the Gardens District, the house having a lovely view of Table Bay. Here, the Perlman children were brought up, went to school and entered into their careers.
My own family has been closely connected with the Perlmans over the years. David Louis (DL) witnessed the will of my grandfather, Wolf Rollnick, in 1927, while his brother Hayim did the same for my grandmother Chaya Rollnick in 1929. Hayim later drew up the ante-nuptial contract for my wife and me in 1954. In the 1980s Hayim, together with his wife Leah, came on Aliyah to Israel. He was a staunch member of our local Conservative synagogue and read the Omer every year.
Benjamin Hirsh Stein and his wife Zlatta left Sutherland for Laingsburg in 1916. There, wrote their daughter, “they lived for nine years on the banks of the river. When Laingsburg suffered the flash flood in the late 1970’s [actually 1981], the house in which my family had lived was washed away. In mid 1925 the family moved to Somerset West to run a large General Dealer Store. Our home in Somerset West was wonderful. We had a ten roomed house… a beautiful chestnut horse called Venus, and a cow called Daisy. My Dad had a wagon for deliveries and a smart black shiny trap for personal use. There were big outbuildings on the grounds at the back of the house and shop, which had barns for timber, coal, chaff and lucerne Behind this enormous building was the fowl run.”
Later the family moved to Cape Town, where Benjamin first ran a hotel and afterwards a dairy. Wrote Nancy, “My Father became well known for his white cheese (today called Cottage Cheese) and he supplied Woolworth’s, OK Bazaars, Rogalsky’s, CTC Bazaar and Milly’s in Cape Town.” Benjamin Hirsh was buried in Cape Town and Zlatte in Stellenbosch, where her relatives were buried.
The first five children of Rachel and Mordecai (Max) Stein, Benjamin’s brother and business partner in Perlman and Stein, were born in Sutherland. After the Perlman-Stein partnership “turned sour” (according to Mordecai’s daughter, Sarah) Mordecai and Rachel left Sutherland, first for Oudtshoorn where Mordecai first made and then lost money in the ostrich feather trade. Thereafter they joined the Benjamin Stein family in Laingsburg, where another three children were born. Mordecai and Rachel moved finally to Johannesburg to be near to where their daughter Leah lived with her husband Eleazar Hoddes. Mordecai was working as a bookkeeper at the time of his death. He and Rachel are buried in Johannesburg.
Bloch Brothers, the other business on Commercial Street, did not lose a partner to the ‘flu or to a souring of the partnership, but carried on for another decade. I found records in the South African Archives of several legal cases in the 1920s involving the Bloch Brothers, with the final case, as late as 1927, being that between them and a Mr. Ockert Cornelius Vermeulen, “overseer of sheep farming”. But the Blochs too eventually left Sutherland, in their case for Cape Town. Aaron Bloch bought himself a property at 4 Roodehek Street in Gardens and set himself up as a dealer in horses. His daughter Rachel married Hyman Selig Orman in 1922, giving her address at the time as 4 Roodehek Street as did her brother Maurice who listed his address as again 4 Roodehek St (and his occupation as General Dealer} when he married Rachel Ezer in 1929. Aaron’s wife Sarah was living in the house when she died in 1934 while Aaron himself was still living there on his death in 1942, the cause of death being a result of injuries caused by a kick from a horse. Aaron’s brother Nathan bought a house on Hopeville St, also in Gardens and some six minutes’ walk from his brother. His death record records him as a “retired speculator (cattle)”. He is buried in Cape Town, as are his nephew Maurice and Maurice’s son Stanley.
Perlman and Stein and the Bloch Brothers were not the only Jewish businesses in Sutherland. In the Sutherland Archives is a list headed (in Afrikaans), “Jewish Traders in Sutherland”. I have not been able to find out when or why the list was drawn up. The two businesses that we know about are on the list. Several names on it, such as Stegmann and Moag, are of persons not Jewish while for some other names I have not been able to find anything relevant in the South African archives. But some of these names have provided useful leads. For instance, I found that Ezekiel Cohen, who had been born in Trakiai, Lithuania, had died in Sutherland in March 1893, his occupation being listed as bottle storekeeper. Thus, he was living and working in Sutherland before Barnett Perlman had even arrived in South Africa. Ezekiel had married a local Afrikaner woman, and their sons were the Cohens on the list of Jewish traders. Another name on the list was that of Gustav Hochfeld, who had also married a local Afrikaner woman. The H.S. Orman on the list was Hyman Selig Orman. We saw above that he had married Rachel, a daughter of Aaron Bloch of Sutherland’s Bloch Brothers. Hyman’s occupation was given as hotel keeper. Had he kept a hotel in Sutherland? A witness to the marriage was Moses Zieve, on the list of Jewish traders as being in the business of Lipschitz and Zieve. Moses had married Frida Sambursky in Cape Town already in 1900, giving his address at the time as Sutherland. H. Lipschitz had signed the 1908 marriage record of Mordecai Stein and Rachel Mervis in Sutherland. Entering the names of Harry Lipschitz and Moses Zieve returned numerous records in the South African archives, from 1900 through to 1920, for Lipschitz and to 1935 for Zieve although the later records for Zieve concerned his activities already in Cape Town where he had set up a meat trading firm in the Cape Town abattoirs. (Incidentally, in one of those cases he was together with my uncle Harry Shore in a litigation against some other meat traders). In Cape Town, Zieve was living at 9 Breda St, just three minutes’ walk from where Nathan Bloch was living. These ex-Sutherlanders had apparently created for themselves in Cape Town’s Gardens a close-knit community where they could talk about their shtetl, that being in this case Sutherland.
Most interesting of all is that following up these names I found a list of the members of the Sutherland town guard during the Anglo-Boer War. The Jewish businessmen were well represented. Moses Zieve, Harry Lipschitz and Marcus Stein (presumably our Max/Mordecai) all received Military Campaign Medals. Morris Braude, a Jew who was not on the list of Jewish traders – being a hawker and thus not owning a business – also received such a medal. When researching Moses Zieve I noticed that he had been on trial, and been convicted, for treason [presumably they were “Cape Rebels”, British citizens who joined the Boers, Sutherland being part of the Cape Colony – Ed.] during the war. I followed this up and found quite a list of people on searching for traitors from Sutherland. Apart from Moses Zieve, the list included Gustav Hochfeld and also one of Ezekiel Cohen’s sons and many names of Afrikaners.
The Anglo-Boer War had taken place in the very early days of Jewish settlement in Sutherland. Twenty years later, most of the Jewish businesses seem to have closed down and the Jewish community dispersed across South Africa.
It is this fact that is the answer to the question we asked at the beginning of this little history: why were there two slaughterers buried in the Jewish cemetery together with only three other Jewish persons? It would seem that in the first place, there were never two slaughterers active at the same time. Sadly, Rev Spitz served in that capacity for only a few short years before he died and was replaced by Rev. Smilg. Also, each slaughterer had another duty, namely he was also the Hebrew school teacher of the little town. But we have now seen that the main reason for the numerical disparity that we found in the graves of Sutherland’s Jewish cemetery is, of course, that the Jewish community lived in the town only some 20 years before dispersing to other parts of the Cape and to further afield, and that it is in those places that their graves lie.
Of the sons of Menachem Mendel and Chaya, Max (known always as Max Jacob) married Rachel Lavine in 1937, his occupation at the time being listed as “manufacturing”. When he visited Brasil in 1945, he was recorded as a “comerciario”, but later he and Rae went on aliyah to Israel. There Max worked on the rebirth of the city of Ashkelon. The South African Zionist Federation played a huge role in the early days of Ashkelon, recruiting South Africans to work, manage and live in the village. Max headed the original management committee. Later he became the managing director of Peltours, which expanded greatly under his direction to become one of the largest travel and tourist enterprises in Israel.
It is interesting that two descendants of Sutherland families were much involved in sports favored by English-speaking Israelis, bowls in the case of a son of Menachem Mendel Spitz, and cricket, where a grandson of Barnett Perlman was the captain of the Israeli cricket team in the Maccabi Games of 1989.
Playing a game of bowls may not have seemed an important priority to most Israelis after the War of Independence. There was the dire security situation and the desperate state of the economy, but full credit must go to Max Spitz, who is revered as the father of lawn bowls in Israel. In the early 1950s, Max dreamed of bringing bowls to Israel, but did not anticipate the bureaucratic hurdles. But what would have broken the back of lesser mortals did not apply to Max – he had nerves of steel. Supported with a team of fellow South African olim, Spitz convinced the mayor of Ramat Gan, Avraham Krinitzi – who had absolutely no idea what bowls was about – that the sport was vital for Israel’s survival.
Max’s brother, the posthumous Menachem Mendel, studied medicine and was a medical practitioner in Kinross in the Bethal district of Transvaal. There he married Dorothy Dison, a gifted pianist, in 1944. Dorothy’s obituary (she died aged 103) records that “During World War II she served as a nurse in Durban, where she met dashing young doctor Mendel (Mendy) Spitz. They married and moved to Kinross … where Mendy was the GP for the whole of the Kinross and Bethal district. She often helped out in the surgery as a receptionist.” Dorothy was active in the local Kinross community, establishing the library, and local branch of the Transvaal Women’s Agricultural Union (TWAU) and organizing the celebrated annual agricultural show in the Kinross Town Hall. The Masonic Hall in Kinross, completed in 1966, was named after W Bro Dr Mendel Spitz, PAGDC, who had taken a leading part in promoting the formation of the Lodge and in planning and carrying through the hall project. The Dorothy and Mendel Spitz Study Bursary was established in their honour in the field of medicine, tenable at any university in South Africa.
A note on sources
Hayim Perlman’s memoirs and the photographs of the Perlman-Stein store and the Sutherland Jewish school children were made available to me through the kindness of one of Hayim’s sons, who also made available to me the information about the Benjamin Hirsh Stein family, this being from the records of the late Nancy Stein Gregory. I am grateful also to another member of this Stein family who gave me additional valuable information on the family.
Marriage and death certificates were from Family Search https://www.familysearch.org/search/ Genealogical records were extracted from JewishGen https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/
The South African Archives for Sutherland and for individuals were searched at http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300gi?20220130153959A3F2EE63%26DB%3DRSAE
Jewish gravestones in Sutherland and the picture of the Jewish Cemetery are from
https://graves-at-eggsa.org/main.php?g2_itemId=43
Mr Lien Fourie, proprietor of the Perlman Family House in Sutherland (https://www.perlmanhouse.co.za/) gave me much useful information. The photograph of the Perlman house is taken from this website.
Chana Stein transcribed the text of the “Jewish Grave” and shared with me her knowledge of the residents of the Gardens of Cape Town in the 1930s and 1940s.
- Wilf Stein is Emeritus Professor of Biophysics, Biological Chemistry, Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
