Richard Mendelsohn, Milton Shain. The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2008. x + 234 pp. $31.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-86842-281-4.

Reviewed by Jonathan Judaken

Published on H-Judaic (August, 2009)

Commissioned by Jason Kalman (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion)

While the frst Jews to ofcially settle in South hand, Europeans colonized him in the name of Africa did so in the early nineteenth century, the the same basic ideas that justifed European ex‐ history of their antecedents is much longer. They pansion and exploitation, notions that we can include Abraham ben Samuel Zacuto, distin‐ name in one word: racism. The "Zacuto complex," guished astronomer and astrologist at the Univer‐ as I want to call it, has played out through most of sity of Salamanca prior to the expulsion of the the history of Jews in South Africa, as this won‐ Jews from Spain in 1492. His astrological tables derful book demonstrates. were published in Hebrew, and then translated The Jews in South Africa, by two of the lead‐ into Latin, and then into Spanish. They were used ing living historians of South Africa’s Jewish past, by Christopher Columbus, and more importantly is the frst general history of South African Jewry by Vasco da Gama, for whom he also selected the in over ffty years. It is written in lively prose, scientifc instruments and joined on his voyage to sumptuously illustrated, and includes rare photo‐ Africa.Zacuto, thereby, “was probably the frst Jew graphs as well as documents culled from the ar‐ to land on South African soil when, in mid-No‐ chives, which are inserted into ofset “boxes” that vember 1497, the Da Gama party went ashore at help illuminate the forces at work in South St Helena Bay on the Cape west coast” (p. 4). By African Jewish history. this time, he was likely a “New Christian,” himself The book “is not a narrow institutional histo‐ a victim of the limpieza de sangre (blood purity) ry of a community,” as Mendelsohn and Shain laws enacted in Spain. rightly claim. “Rather it attempts to encompass a Zacuto is thus symbolic of a double legacy at broad swathe of Jewish life, from the bimah and the heart of the history of Jews in South Africa: on the boardroom to the bowling green.” Nor is it a the one hand, his knowledge and actions were in‐ Whiggish history. Instead, “it depicts the fragility trinsic to European colonialism. But on the other H-Net Reviews of the early foundations, the oscillating fortunes episodes as a means to render what the broader of the community as it matured amidst turbulent work ofers. currents, both domestic and international, and its After the Portuguese explorers like Zacuto, latter-day challenges and responses” (p. ix). As Jews were among the frst Dutch travelers to such, it ofers gems from the past that are touch‐ round the Cape of Good Hope. But they were not stones for the big questions we should all think allowed to step onto the land of the new Dutch about as scholars of Jewish history. settlements that began after 1652. Things changed To this end, unlike its historiographic prede‐ when the British began to compete with the Dutch cessors (see the box, “Constructing a Usable Past,” for the Cape Colony in the late eighteenth century. pp. 136-137), the Jewish community is not repre‐ The principles of Lockean and deistic tolerance sented as monolithic, but as segregated along permitted individual Jews of English, Dutch, and lines of class, ideology, and religiosity, not to men‐ German origin to begin to arrive in South Africa, tion separated in numerous ways from the larger with the frst ofcial minyan praying together on British and Afrikaner white communities, and, of Yom Kippur in 1841. This small group of Anglo- course, from the Blacks, Asians, and Coloreds who German Jewish pioneers was highly acculturated, today might be their neighbors. South African following English norms and habits, which they Jews thus lived in ghettos akin to those of their insisted upon maintaining when they created the early modern predecessors, sometimes with invis‐ frst Jewish institutions in South Africa. ible walls and sometimes with diamond studs on The example of Nathaniel Isaacs, “a young the gateposts. Jewish adventurer and trader” who lived among The book is divided chronologically into four the Zulus in the late 1820s, shows how these pio‐ broad periods, each of which had a distinctive neers were Zacuto’s descendents. In 1836, Isaacs character. First is the “age of pioneers” (1800-80), published Travels and Adventures in Eastern defned by Anglo-German Jewish immigrants who Africa, Descriptive of the Zoolus, their Manners, established the Jewish community in South Africa. Customs, etc., etc., a seminal text on Shaka Zulu. Second is the "age of the Litvaks" (1880-1930), the But as the extracts included by Shain and Mendel‐ immigrants who arrived in the late nineteenth sohn make plain, it was a work that helped to jus‐ and early twentieth centuries. They consolidated tify the colonial expansion of South Africa by de‐ Jewish life in South Africa. After the Shoah wiped picting Shaka as bellicose and barbaric. Not with‐ out 90 percent of their brethren in der heim (the out interest, though, is the fact that Isaacs occa‐ Old Country), they constituted the largest surviv‐ sionally played the role of the doctor. Amongst his ing community of Lithuanian Jews. The third peri‐ remedies was the use of “chicken soup” (see the od is that of the “South African Jews” (1930-1970) box, “Chicken Soup and the Zulus,” p. 7). who instituted themselves into the lineaments of These pioneers trailing in Zacuto’s wake apartheid South Africa. Finally is our epoch of would eventually follow the British into the interi‐ “Jewish South Africans,” (1970-present), one of the or of South Africa in search of the wealth that diverse communities of the new multi-ethnic came from the discovery of diamonds and gold. South Africa. Some came as prospectors, but most created sub‐ Given the format of the book, Mendelsohn sidiary enterprises catering to the needs of those and Shain are able to tell not only a grand narra‐ digging the earth. Aptly summing up this period, tive, but also countless petite histoires that pro‐ Mendelsohn and Shain write, “Their comfortable vide a multifaceted rendition of this past that is integration into the wider white community, their not over. I will focus in on some these smaller small numbers, the gender imbalance [since most

2 H-Net Reviews were men], and the assimilatory impulses of a town and city, storekeepers, and sometimes pri‐ frontier society, all pointed towards the eventual mary producers in niche markets, like the ostrich disappearance of this infant Jewish community” feather boom of the decades before the First (p. 27). World War. By 1911, 46, 919 Jews were recorded Two proximate events resulted in their efo‐ in the frst census of the new Union of South resce rather than their disappearance. The frst Africa, making Jews 3.68 percent of the white pop‐ was the pogroms that began after the assassina‐ ulation and .79 percent of the total population. tion of Tsar Alexander II. The second was the dis‐ Most who left Lithuania were not religiously covery of the largest gold reef ever found in the observant. They were feeing stifing conditions in South African interior. The result was that among search of a better life. They found it in the relative the three million Jews who emigrated from east‐ tolerance of South Africa. By 1909, there were six ern Europe between 1880-1914, forty thousand Jewish mayors of cities big and small. Compare ended up in South Africa, the majority from the this to the same period in Vienna where Karl Kovno province of Lithuania. Mendelsohn and Lueger was elected mayor on an antisemitic plat‐ Shain wonderfully reconstruct the immigration form. Cape Town had its own version of the Low‐ chain that brought them from the nether reaches er East Side or the East End, called District Six. It of the east to the southern tip of Africa. Dragging created institutions of Jewish learning, a Yiddish- the baggage of Litvak life with them, they general‐ language press, and adherents of both socialism ly stopped in London, with half of them staying a and Zionism. So by the time that Ghandi began his fortnight in the Jews Temporary Shelter in the nonviolent agitation in South Africa, he was “sur‐ East End. They made their way from there to rounded by Jews” (p. 98), mostly Litvaks, who by Southampton and then on to Cape Town. There then had become South African Jews. they would be aided by formal and informal But South African Jews could hardly rest easi‐ landsmannschaften (immigrant fraternal soci‐ ly on their laurels. In 1930, a Quota Act was eties), starting a new life, often as smous (itiner‐ passed that “ushered in a decade of profound dif‐ ant traders), but some even fnding their way into fculty and discomfort for South African Jewry. A the underworld. ‘Jewish Question’ emerged against a backdrop of As was the fate of their fellow travelers in economic depression and a burgeoning and exclu‐ France and America, the newcomers were as‐ sivist Afrikaner nationalism that was struggling to saulted not only with the challenges of their new capture the political high ground. The Act herald‐ terrain, but also with a discursive onslaught. It ed what the historian Todd Endelman, writing in was characterized by an anti-Jewish idiom that the European context, terms the transformation fused together social pathologies, criminology, eu‐ of ‘private’ into ‘public’ or ‘programmatic’ anti‐ genics, and social hygiene, all focused on the pur‐ semitism--the shift from ‘expressions of contempt portedly degenerate bodies of the as-yet unaccul‐ and discrimination outside the realm of public turated and perhaps unassimilable so-called Peru‐ life’ to the ‘eruption of antisemitism in public life'" vian Jews, who were actually what was referred (p. 105). to in Yiddish as the grieners (greenhorns. While Afrikaaner nationalism was gaining But quickly these new immigrants actually traction with antisemitism as a plank in its plat‐ became “signifcant agents of the commercial rev‐ form, ultimately by a very narrow vote South olution that transformed the South African coun‐ Africa decided to join the Allies in support of the tryside in the late nineteenth and early twentieth war efort in 1939. In its aftermath, the choppy centuries” (p. 46). They were mediators between waters separating the Afrikaner white majority

3 H-Net Reviews and the Jews came ashore in the conciliation with The Soweto riots in 1976 marked a wake-up apartheid. Jews who had previously been depict‐ call, but one that was responded to diferently in ed as a swarthy race had this past whitewashed. diferent families. For nearly forty thousand like The alliance was sutured by “the economic fruits my family, over the next few years a new diaspora of racial exploitation and political power” and an‐ of South African Jews living in America, Canada, tisemitism declined. But Jewish apprehension re‐ Australia, and Israel emerged. Others embraced mained--an aspect of the Zacuto complex--and the fateful “Pretoria-Jerusalem axis” (p. 176), “contributed towards a political quiescence as the which tied the rightward-moving irredentism of apartheid project unfolded” (pp. 135). Likud’s frst fush with power to the military and This capitulation would never remain unchal‐ industrial relationship that would develop in the lenged, however. Ronald Segal, writing in Com‐ context of other African countries cutting ties to mentary in 1957, would eloquently pose the ques‐ Israel, often around the campaign identifying tion that resounds through to the present: “South Zionism as racism. Many began to turn inward, African Jews are forever conscious of injustice, “towards increased observance which would but of the injustice that they alone are made to transform the face of South African orthodoxy sufer. They quickly grow furious over the treat‐ within a couple of decades” (p. 186). Some went ment of Israel.... Yet they watch with complacency on as before. But there were also young Jews the innumerable daily manifestations of joined by brave rabbis who formed organizations ‘apartheid.’... How can this one-eyed morality be like Jews for Justice and vocally aligned with the defended?” (p. 138). Jewish radicals would repeat‐ broader anti-apartheid struggle. They were per‐ edly dispute this moral blindness. But they were haps ready to shuck of the Zacuto complex. mostly what Isaac Deutscher has called “non-Jew‐ When President F. W. de Klerk lifted the ban ish Jews.” on the ANC in 1990, “Jews generally welcomed his The range of responses by South African Jews bold initiative” (p. 192), but they remained uneasy to apartheid was dramatically illustrated during about the future. The result has been ongoing em‐ the Rivonia Trial in 1963 that would result in Nel‐ igration, cutting the Jewish community to nearly son Mandela’s twenty-seven year incarceration on half its size from the peak in 1970. And Jews today Robbin Island. Among the seventeen arrested in remain fearful of crime, corruption, and rising Rivonia, there were fve whites, all of whom were anti-Zionism in the context of a more activist Mus‐ Jews. The defense team, as well, was mostly Jew‐ lim community and a signifcant turn by the gov‐ ish. But so was the chief prosecutor, Deputy Attor‐ ernment away from support for Israel. Jews today ney General of the Transvaal Percy Yutar. Like are more religiously fragmented, but also wedded him, most Jews closed their eyes, their ears, their to a future as Jewish South Africans. They will hearts to the cries of those around them, en‐ have to navigate that future delicately, as The sconced as they were in the ever-expanding brick Jews in South Africa so powerfully shows has al‐ and mortar of bigger houses, larger synagogues, ways been the case. escalating Jewish day schools, expanding sports clubs, and chicer neighborhoods, which func‐ ing tioned like Jewish homelands in the archipelago , but also of apartheid, ultimately segregating the majority of the now 120,000-strong Jewish community (p. 33) from that small still voice of conscience. (pp. 40-42) (p. 44)

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in , pp. 46-47 and pp. 62-63) (pp. 49-50) (pp. 66-67) (pp. 76-78) (pp. 80-81) (82) (pp. 96-97) (p. 180) announced the unbanning of

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Citation: Jonathan Judaken. Review of Mendelsohn, Richard; Shain, Milton. The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. August, 2009.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24051

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