(Author: Shirley Zar, Vol. 72, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2017)
In 2013 the Yiddish Folkschool nursery school in Sydenham, Johannesburg, hosted a Yom Ha’atzmaut ceremony to which former pupils were invited. Andy Haefner, the headmistress, wrote: “I have begun to feel very strongly about our link with the past and with this in mind I set about searching for our heritage …. the search was on to find the Yiddish folk alumni. I wanted our kids to connect to the past in a real tangible way”.
A handful of people attended, some reconnecting after sixty years of not having seen each other. It was an overwhelmingly emotional experience for guests, who were enchanted as the children entertained them with their dancing and singing of Yiddish and Hebrew songs.
A special guest was Rosa Woolf, a member of the first committee of the original Yiddishe Folkshul founded in 1937. She was one of the protégées of Mendel Tabatznik, the acclaimed Yiddishist. Together with her mother, Eva Green, and her brother, she lived with the Tabatznik family in their home at 15 Upper Ross Street, Doornfontein. There Mendel, with the assistance of Eva, had started the Yiddish kindergarten. It was extremely popular with the immigrants as Yiddish, the mameloshen, was the language of everyday instruction. Rosa taught there, as did Mendel’s daughter Mirele (Mary) Tabatznik. She went on to become principal of the kindergarten. Later, in the late 1950s, she started her own successful school, Riviera Nursery School.
By 2013 Rosa, once so dynamic, was wheelchair-bound, suffering from Alzheimer’s and unable to communicate. However, the joyous singing in Yiddish of the kindergarten children triggered an amazing reaction from her. Some spark awoke in her ailing body and mind a desire to participate and reconnect with her past. Getting up, she clapped and sang and joined in the celebration. A truly miraculous awakening!
On visiting this nursery school, I too wanted to pay homage to the memory of what the once vibrant Yiddish community had achieved in setting up an institution dedicated to the survival of Yiddish and to its rich culture. But I couldn’t help asking: “does this school’s continuity as the Yiddish Folkschool kindergarten have any significant meaning? Or will it be just a short time before even the name falls into disuse?” To answer this, one has to look at the history of the school and its ethos, as well as to ask if the founding fathers expectations were realistic. Perhaps, I mused, this little school was an anachronism hanging on by a thread of sentiment to its past.
In November 2016, the school finally closed. Although it had represented only a vestige of the original school, there was a feeling of profound loss – a loss of Yiddish, of Yiddish culture and of our historical roots. It signified the end of an era.
Context of the Yiddishe Folkshul – Doornfontein
On the occasion of the 20th anniversar y of the founding of the Yiddish Folkschool in Doornfontein the Yiddishist and author Leibl Feldman (1896-1975), who was closely connected with the school and whose family were major patrons, wrote an article for Jewish Affairs outlining the background to the school and its distinctive contribution.1 In it, he explained how the modern 19th Cent ur y enlightenment movement (Haskalah) brought about a renaissance in Yiddish culture, one giving rise to the emergence of scores of new and important writers, poets, philosophers and artists. Classic authors such as Mendele, Peretz and Shalom Aleichem gave voice to the changing world, catering for the more than eight million Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the Diaspora. Important national, workers and socialist organizations were formed. ‘The cry for justice and a striving for a better life for all resounded amongst the Jewish masses, and life vibrated with new interest and hope’ Feldman wrote.
In the context of this renaissance, the modernization of Jewish education became important. The traditional education of the shtetl – the Cheder, Talmud Torah and Yeshiva – was regarded by the modernists as stultifying. Yiddish folkschools – secular schools with Yiddish as the language of instruction emerged in spite of opposition from Orthodox and pro-Hebrew factions. In Poland, in addition to elementary schools, high schools and seminaries were opened under a central educational body – the Yiddish cultural and educational organisation YIVO (Yidishe Visenshaftlekhe Institut). Educators from this organisation were to become the leading luminaries directing the Doornfontein Yiddish Folkschool, which promoted Yiddish culture, history and literature. Naturally, at both the kindergarten and the afternoon classes Yiddish was the medium of instruction. Music and acting played seminal roles in teaching.
Among the immigrants who came to South Africa and who were imbued with the ideals of the Yiddish renaissance was Mendel Tabatznik (1894-1975), a leading light in the establishment of Yiddish cultural life in Johannesburg. Besides teaching, lecturing, organising a Yiddish choir and acting and producing Yiddish theatre, he wrote prolifically, producing poetry, stories and novels. Tabatznik was born in Kletsk in the province of Minsk, White Russia, in 1894. In 1913, the family moved to Mir. After seeing a performance of Goldfaden’s Shulamis, he developed a passion for theatre and as a young man became director of the local amateur group. After studying to become a teacher he was appointed principal of the Mir Yiddishe Folkshul. His love of Yiddish culture, its theatre and literature, as well as education were driving forces of his life. In 1927 he became mayor of Mir but shortly afterwards, immigrated to South Africa. Driven by a fervent socialist ideology, his first option for immigration was Palestine, but he was unable to secure the necessary immigration certificates required from the local Zionist organisation. It took several years before, in 1932, he managed to bring out his wife Feigele and children Dovid, Berele and Mirele to join him. By that time the Quota Act (1930) had been passed. This stipulated that not more than fifty immigrants per year would be admitted to South Africa from Quota (mainly East European) countries. Had Tabatznik not had the necessary papers completed early on, in readiness for the family’s immigration, they would probably have been denied entry.
On arrival in South Africa, Tabatznik began working as a teacher, setting up the kindergarten and forming a Yiddish theatre group. Two members of his Yiddish theatre group in Mir, David Dancig and Chaim Por t noy,who also immigrated to South Africa, made successful theatre careers here. They were joined by Feigele Kopelowitz,a leading lady in Yiddish theatre and a former pupil of Tabatznik in Mir. Dancig ran a small boarding house in Benoni, where Rabbi Irma Aloy stayed when he arrived in 1937.
The Tabatznik home in Doornfontein became a community centre of Yiddish activities. Surrounded by a veranda and set on a double stand, it was large in comparison with the small houses and semi-detached dwellings in the area. In the yard in a cluster of buildings, a variety of Yiddish-oriented activities took place. There were theatre groups, choirs rehearsing and music ensembles practising, such as the ‘Russian Balalaika Musicians’ who dressed in traditional Russian tunics for their performances. The local barber, Zelik Alter, was the conductor. So popular was the group that it even travelled to Muizenberg to perform in the Pavilion in the summer season, as did Tabatznik with his Yiddish Theatre group.
Yiddish Folkschool summer camp, Muizenberg, 1949 -1950
Beginnings
In January 1929 Tabatznik, in partnership with Mischa Szur, an educationalist associated with YIVO in Vilna, founded the first modern Yiddish Folkschool under the auspices of the Yiddish Literary and Dramatic Society. Known as der Fareyn, this society was a pivot around which intellectual life in Johannesburg revolved, with the weekly Yiddish journal Der Afrikaner helping to publicise its activities. When Mischa left, Mendel became principal of the school. He was aided by Dovid Fram, the well-known Yiddish poet.
The f ledgling school faced great opposition from the Talmud Torah schools and from Zionists who were opposed Yiddish and to the school’s avowedly ‘secular and radical’program. This resulted in its closure after just two years. It was only when the dynamic young Yiddish intellectual Itzkhak Charlashwas sent out, on behalf of YIVO in Poland, as a Yiddish cultural emissary that the Yiddish Folk school started in earnest in September 1937. Its first premises were in Walter Wise Building in the CBD and Charlash was the principal.
There were conf licts. Rabbi Yitzchak Kossowsky, Rabbi of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol and head of the Beth Din, supported the teaching of Yiddish but denounced the school for rejecting religion. Chief Rabbi Landau was likewise antagonistic. As a passionate Zionist he would not countenance the Yiddishists’ anti-Zionist stance. There was also opposition from the SA Board of Jewish Education SABJE) and the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. Not until 1939 was the school fully recognised and supported by the SABJE. It was clear by then that it was fulfilling a real need for the community.
Charlash epitomized the spirit of Yiddish intellectualism upon which the school was founded. To cater for young adults he inaugurated the Yiddish ‘Humanistic College’ where each week he gave a two-hour lecture. He dominated the Yiddisher Kultur Fareyn until his departure from South Africa in 1948. Yiddish newspapers and publications proliferated in this climate, with Doornfontein a crucible of this vibrant Yiddish intellectualism. Newspapers and journals such as Di Afrikaner Tzaytung, Yom Tov Bletter and Tsukunft (published in New York) were popular. An added attraction was the regular contributions from famous Jewish writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Israel Zangwill and Shmuel Josef Agnon, as well as local writers. This milieu of intense Yiddish activity continued until after the war, when the disillusionment of Stalin’s purges, whose victims included the great Yiddish writers such as Shlomo Mikhoels, Perets Markish and Dovid Bergelson, led to a sense of betrayal for many of the Yiddishists.
Yiddish Folkschool in 1937 – the heyday of Yiddishism
The Tabatznik residence in Doornfontein was home to the Yiddish kindergarten before it moved, firstly to a house at 30 Upper Meyer Street and then, in 1945, to more spacious double-story premises in the same street along with the burgeoning afternoon school. The memories of many ex-pupils are connected to that place, which continued to function until the 1960s, by which time a new school had been established in Sydenham. Mary Lazarus (nee Tabatznik) reminisces nostalgically of those early days, when their home and property pulsed with Yiddish education, culture and community activities: “My father was a melamed, so we had little material wealth but the intensity of being part of this Yiddish ambience which pulsated with richness was indescribable” she says. In the photos celebrating the first anniversary of Yiddish Folkschool, a young Mary is seen holding the f lag aloft, the picture reminiscent of a socialist rally. The persons in these historic pictures remained committed to the ideals of the school throughout their lives. They were the teacher and committee members who dedicated themselves to the school’s success.
In 1945, when the Tabatzniks moved out of Doornfontein, their property remained the centre of Yiddish life as premises for the Jewish Workers Club (Yiddisher Arbeter Klub). Post-war, there was a belief that the Yiddish community “could and would – as Jewish workers – promote together with Jewish values, their own language, the advancement and further development of Jewish literature”.2In this brave new post-war world the workers would unite to create a more equitable future. The Club promoted values of the Bund,a socialist workers party, which had been founded in Vilna in 1897. It was anti-religion, anti-Zionist and Marxist in leaning, but besides its political affiliations the Club served as a centre for social and Yiddish cultural events, in particular a vibrant Yiddish theatre and choir performances. For a time the Club dominated the Yiddish life of that immigrant society.It was also renowned for its extensive Yiddish library. In October 1948 the house in Upper Ross Street was destroyed by arson and all its records and membership lists were destroyed. After twenty years, the Club ceased to exist.
Yiddish Folkschool pupils attended classes in the afternoons, after having spent their mornings at primary schools, mainly Jewish Government Primary and Doornfontein Primary schools. They were fetched by the Yiddish Folkschool bus, from surrounding suburbs such as Bertrams, Doornfontein and Troyeville. In the late afternoons, they were returned to their homes. Shirley Skikne (nee Klonner) and her sister Edith were pupils there in the 1940s. Their posed Folkschool photos show the girls dressed in pale blue dresses, bows in their hair, looking every bit like shtetl children. One notes the absence of boys in the picture. The emphasis on afternoon school sport took precedence over Yiddish education, which most families in any case regarded as being unimportant in the new world. Even though Yiddish was the mameloshen of these children of immigrants, without formal instruction they could neither read nor write in it. The Yiddishist founders of the school understood implicitly that no matter how fluently one spoke the language, literacy was the key to Yiddish’s survival.
Support for Yiddish Folkschool:
Most of the parents who supported the school were part of the inner circle of Yiddishists and members of the Yiddisher Arbeter Klub, but within that diverse community of Eastern Europe Jews others also supported the school. The early photos show the dominance of Bundist families such as Voronof, Feldman, Kartun, Shulman and others.
The Klonners represented typical Yiddisher parents, who did not ally themselves to the political doctrines and Bundist philosophies, but were traditional, religious and Zionist. Their insistence that their daughters, Edie and Shirley, attend the school was simply to ensure that they would be literate in Yiddish and have an understanding of Yiddish culture and its rich history. To know from where you came was all important. But for Hymie, the Klonner’s son, football was an obsession hence he absented himself from Folkschool. Later he became a famous soccer star, but his parents were ‘not enthusiastic about their Ingele chasing after a ball’. Usually, boys from traditional families went to cheder in the afternoons in order to prepare for their barmitzvah. For many Bundist families a barmitzvah for a son was not regarded as obligatory. Jo Dane recounts how even though he attended Folkschool, at his extended family’s insistence, he was forced to rather go to cheder to prepare for his barmitzvah, which was held at the Bertrams shul. His Bundist father’s objections were overruled. Still, to this day Jo is wont to sing Yiddish ditties to his grandchildren: “mit mayne kleyne hammerle ikh klap klap klap…”
Instruction began with mastery of a Yiddish primer, Ikh lern Zikh Yidish. As pupils progressed and became proficient at reading, they read the classics and the works of modern Yiddish authors. General knowledge included the use of the Yiddish encyclopaedia as setworks. On the closure of the Sydenham school, among the old abandoned books were copies of Algemayne Entziklopedia, published in 1935 and featuring illustrations of the up-to-date technological inventions of the time. In particular there were lessons on Jewish history and the principles of Jewish ethical morality. The school did not espouse religious practice but the pupils were “imbued with the ideals of the prophets and the principles of social justice” comments Feldman.
Although the focus was on Yiddish, the study of Hebrew was introduced from the second year. Feldman concedes, “as we have two national languages, Yiddish and Hebrew ….” Much of the instruction was done creatively through the medium of acting and singing, inculcating a love of dramatization and theatre in the pupils. At the end of each year a highlight was the school concert of drama and music. There was an operetta, poetry reading and dramatic presentations, in which past pupils participated, acting in plays such as The Holtzmans by I. Mingon. Performances of the works of Peretz and Shalom Aleichem were always popular and the community attended in droves.
A scene from I L Peretz’s ‘The Land Tenant’, by pupils of the Yiddish Folkschool (circa. mid-1950s).
As a young teacher Rosa Woolf, who was an avowed Communist, was well acquainted with modern teaching developments of avant-garde educators in France, Austria and Germany. She was a follower of the famed German educator Friederich Froebel (1782-1852), who had opened the first Kindergarten in 1837, as well as being familiar with the theories of German teacher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), whose system of education is still adhered to today in many schools named after him. As principal of the kindergarten, Rosa incorporated many progressive educational ideas. Froebel believed that the teacher of the Kindergarten exerted an immense inf luence on the child’s natural development. This should be furthered by freely encouraging their creative sense through games, exercises and through play, particularly with his innovative equipment. (The acclaimed Froebel blocks were said to have been the seminal creative inspiration of genius architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose mother had acquired them for her son at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876).
1945 – 1960: The move to Sydenham
In order to accommodate the expanding intake, in 1945 the Yiddish Folkshul committee bought a double story house at 45 Upper Meyer Street. These were the halcyon years of the school.In spite of the fact that the secular schools, even Jewish Government Primary, paid no heed to the culture of its immigrant pupils, but served rather to denigrate their Yiddish background, there remained an overwhelming atmosphere of yiddishkeit which permeated life in Doornfontein. This was predicated by the social geography of the place, the homogeneity of that Litvak society and the ubiquitous use of the mameloshen.
The founding headmasters of Jewish Government School in Doornfontein, A.M. Abrahams, followed by I.H. Harris, were English. The ethos of the school emulated that of the English Public School. Both principals were products of the famous Jews Free School in Whitechapel, London, whose academic success was founded on strict discipline and unwavering commitment to English cultural values. Abrahams was an ardent Zionist. His stance as President of the SA Zionist Federation was one which would not countenance the Yiddishists’ and Bundists’ anti–Zionist views of Jewish nationalism. Abrahams believed that in order to acculturate his immigrant charges, the ‘foreign elements’ of Eastern European immigrant pupils needed to be exorcised, even going so far as to insist that pupils change their foreign sounding names to English names.
The denigration of Yiddish was formalised at these schools, where pupils learnt only of “our glorious English Colonial Empire”. The immigrant parents acquiesced in this. They wanted their children to enter the mainstream as rapidly as possible and saw mastery of English as the means to upward mobility. Many who could afford the fees sent their sons to private Christian schools, such as Marist Brothers Christian College and St Johns College, in spite of Rabbi Landau’s urging community members to refrain from this practice. Telling too is the recollection of Sheila Saffer (nee Bakst) of how her mother would instruct her: “ven ikh reyd mit dir in Yiddish, must tu entfern in eyngels” (When I speak to you in Yiddish, you must answer in English). The aim was mastery of English as soon as possible for the whole family. Many of the older generation never mastered English completely and with their demise, particularly of the bobbas and zeidas, the imperative to speak Yiddish fell away. Many immigrant children simply ‘forgot’ their mameloshen, sometimes by design or simply by non-usage. The forces of assimilation and acculturation into the host society could not be halted. With the exodus from Doornfontein, that close-knit urban shtetl, came dispersion to suburbia and a decline in yiddishism.
Yiddish Folkschool, once a bulwark against forgetting, could not withstand the onslaught. Its death knell began with the curtailment of new immigrants due to the Quota Act of 1930 and was compounded by the fracture and destruction of der heim. The Holocaust finally extinguished the life-blood of Yiddish culture. The Yiddish strongholds of Eastern Europe were no more. Following on the ounding of the Hebrew Teachers Seminary in 1939 and the Jewish Day Schools (King David School in 1948), the emphasis was exclusively on Hebrew. The dominance of Hebrew in education was further entrenched by the miracle of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Yiddish was relegated to obscurity not least by the very negative attitude towards it by the Zionist leadership in Israel.
With the demographic shift northwards and the resultant demise of Doornfontein, Bertrams and the surrounding suburbs as Jewish residential areas, the Yiddish Folkschool relocated to Sydenham in 1954. For a short period, both the Doornfontein and Sydenham schools ran simultaneously. A new building, designed to accommodate the kindergarten and afternoon classes, was built in 1960. It was designed by architect Mannie Feldman, whose family were founders and patrons of the Folkschool. The building was a trailblazer in school design here, a symbol of modernism celebrating the machine aesthetic of steel edged framing in a modular design. The building created an environment of spatial volumes, suffused with light and sunshine, where inside and outside were seamlessly enjoined. Sculpture and murals complemented the building. Mannie himself sculpted the entrance sculpture welcoming people to the school, while his friend, artist Harold Rubin, created the mural alongside the paddling pool. Here was a place where a remnant of our Yiddish culture might have been fostered, a place which might even have served as a repository of our immigrant memory. However, the tide could not be turned and soon the afternoon classes were discontinued. All that remained was the preschool, today also defunct.
One is plagued with regrets for the lost opportunities and the misplaced optimism of the founding fathers of Yiddish Folkschool. Their dream of handing over that rich heritage to future generations was aborted. As custodians of our past they failed us. Eight million of our people once created a rich tapestry of life in Yiddish. All that we have now to remember that civilization are a few popular songs, jokes and comedy acts and a smattering of colloquial words. A few centres of Yiddish learning and sporadic attempts to revive our lost legacy cannot reverse the tide. Even the remarkable Aaron Lansky and his Yiddish repository of books at Hampshire College, Amherst Massachusetts, cannot impact sufficiently. Did we try hard enough, are we victims of indifference and amnesia? Does it no longer matter?
At Yiddish Folkschool’s closing function,an address was given by a former teacher Freda Shreevo, whose mother before her had taught at the school from its inception. Speaking from her heart in flawless ‘Vilna Yiddish’, her address might have served as a worthy requiem for the school. But as I surveyed the crowd, both young and old, it was obvious that only a handful of persons understood what she was saying. An instamatic picture of the reality! The disconnect of place and culture was absolute. No words can express the pathos of that final ending, of the futility of the dream.
For Leibl Feldman, his belief in the Folkschool as an essential cultural anchor connecting us to our past had fuelled his optimism as to its future. On the schools 20th anniversary he wrote, “In spite of some antagonism towards our schools, the Yiddish Folkschool is now generally recognized as an important element in Jewish education in this country and a factor making for the survival of our people”.3
Currently, a new phenomenon has emerged which attracts many tourists – a desire to visit di heim to reconnect with their roots. But the reality is that our memories as second and later generation immigrants reside not in Eastern Europe but in the immediacy of those new world shtetlekh here, where the dichotomy of life – the harking back and the embracing of the new – went side by side. Yiddish, the immigrants’ most valuable baggage, once dominated that society. Those places, which were an intrinsic part of the immigrant experience, serve as a trigger for our memories. Their loss is not just of the physical place, but of continuity, of our not so distant past history.
Yiddish culture is erased from our memory. Once there were evenings celebrating Yiddish literature, new theatrical productions, presentations from the works of great writers, a flowering of literary output, a vibrant press, films – a whole Yiddish creative cultural milieu which disappeared.
The demise of Yiddish Folkschool is a symbol of that loss.
Shirley Zar studied Architecture and Town Planning at Wits University, going on to work with some of Johannesburg’s most eminent architects. She later lectured in architecture at the University of Johannesburg and founded its Town Planning Department.
NOTES
- ‘The Yiddish Folkschool: Its contribution’, Jewish Affairs, October, 1957.
- Shapiro, Jack, The Streets of Doornfontein, Johannesburg, 2010.
- The Yiddish Folkschool: Its Contribution’, Jewish Affairs, October, 1957.
