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South African Jews As the Silent Minority

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South African Jews As the Silent Minority Richard Weiner South African Jews as the Silent Minority s an 18-year-old draftee in the South semi-desert Karoo, and I’d ask passersby if there African Navy in the 1970s, I was one of was a Joodse Kerk (Jewish church). I pored over A only two Jews on my destroyer. I was census figures to find out how many people “of the called “Jewboy” by my peers and by my chief Jewish persuasion” lived in various South African petty officer, who, learning that I was planning to communities. At the time, there were still Jewish move to Israel after demobilization, told me that families scattered in two hundred and twenty rural he might bump into me in the streets of Haifa, where he was going for training by the Israeli Navy. He revealed this to CITED IN THIS ESSAY me at a time when Israel vociferously denied any formal relationship with the The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History, by apartheid military forces. Richard Mendelsohn and Milton Shain. 2008, Jona- One evening I was called by the than Ball Publishers, 276 pages. captain to his cabin to meet with three Israeli officers whose ship had docked alongside ours in the middle of the night. My towns, many of them with old congregations that strong Zionist identity took a beating that night. I were barely holding on. was disgusted to see “my people” fraternizing with At the peak in the early 1970s, about a hundred enforcers of the apartheid regime. and twenty thousand Jews lived in South Africa. As a percentage of the white population of four million My paternal family came to South Africa from (about 12 percent of the total population of South Eastern Europe in the late 1880s; my mother came Africa, although census figures were rough and later, as one of the relatively small number of inaccurate in the apartheid years), Jews numbered Holocaust survivors who made it to South Africa about 3 percent — similar to American Jews out after the war. Prior to that, the Protestant-dominated government wasn’t keen to let Jews and Catholics in (although in later years they welcomed anyone who would help bolster the ranks of the white population). Growing up as a Jew within the white minority, I was fascinated by all things South African-Jewish. Trips to the Jewish Library in Johannesburg were a real treat. I would persuade my father to shlep me to small towns and villages in our region where Jewish communities either no longer existed or were barely functioning, just so that I could take pictures of their synagogues. We’d stop in small towns in the vast RICHARD WEINER is a transportation planning con- sultant in San Francisco, specializing in accessible public transit for people with disabilities and older The author in his high school uniform, posing with a servant JC adults. from his household. SPRING 2010 19 of the total U.S. population. Johannesburg was the Soweto uprising. It was a prescient move that our New York City, Muizenberg our Florida beach was guided more by my desire to heal myself of the resort. Our small Jewish community in Pretoria (the trauma of my military service, and of my sense of “belly of the apartheid beast,” as we called it), had despair at the potential for change in South Africa, clear boundaries: All my friends were Jewish and than by any anticipation of the upheaval that was to I never saw a Christmas tree outside a storefront take place a few months after my departure. Many window. unanswered questions about my home country Yet with my budding political consciousness trailed me long after I arrived in the United States. (which probably began in my first years of elemen- How did the Jewish labor movement in South Af- tary school as I absorbed more of my mother’s rica differ from that in the U.S.? Did Yiddish go Holocaust stories), I also began questioning the through a similar transformation in South Africa in role of the Jewish community and our communal the face of quick acculturation in the early 1900s? leadership in relation to the apartheid regime. Was the community really as homogeneous as I’d Given that we were living in Pretoria, home of the always assumed, with the majority of our anteced- military headquarters, the police force, the Security ents coming from a specific region in Lithuania? Branch, and the Pretoria Prison where so many The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History were tortured and hanged, why did our rabbi never answers many of these questions and illuminates speak out about the inhumanity of apartheid? Why my formative years by providing some of their did we ask God in our shabbat services to safeguard historical context. Finally, a book that deals head- our political leaders? Why did the South African on with the political role of the Jewish community, Jewish Board of Deputies hide behind the statement warts and all! By contrast, the yearbook published that “Jews . are to be found among the members in 1968, South African Jewry 1967-68, had only and supporters of all political parties…there is no frustrated me by describing the community’s his- question of a Jewish stand or a Jewish vote”? Why tory and impressive achievements in education, did they not speak out about the cruel injustices that business, medicine and other fields as though they surrounded us, which were publicized in the brave occurred in a political vacuum. “Good Jews, good English-language media? South Africans,” exclaimed a caption in the book When small voices of dissent within the Jewish for the photo of Herzlia Jewish Day School’s rugby community attempted to expose this conspiracy team. It was obviously designed to convey a sense of silence, they were easily quashed. One little- of Jewish patriotism in order to ward off any re- known attempt that I was aware of through per- peat of the anti-Semitism of the 1930s, which the sonal connections was the newspaper published Jewish leadership feared could be reignited by the by Brian Walt, whose family was prominent in the presence of many Jews within the of anti-apartheid mainstream Jewish community. In the mid-1970s, movement. I knew the book didn’t speak for me or Walt, who was later to become executive director my Jewish friends, but there was no other history of Rabbis for Human Rights in the U.S., exposed to be found. substandard wages at the large Jewish old age home in Cape Town. Reading The Jews in South Africa reminded me How was I to understand that both the prosecutor of the dangers, both perceived and real, of oppos- and the defense lawyer in Nelson Mandela’s trial ing apartheid, and why Jewish communal leaders were Jews —or that the trial had been held in the were reluctant to speak out. I felt a modicum of beautiful old synagogue in Pretoria, now known rakhmones (mercy) for them, and even stronger as the Old Synagogue Court? Jews as individuals appreciation of the bravery of those who did protest. figured prominently in the anti-apartheid struggle, A small anecdote from my youth illustrates this yet these activists were nowhere to be found in my paradox: As a child of a survivor, I was conscious at community. a very young age of the parallels between the photos I left South Africa in 1976, a few months before of anti-Jewish signs on German shop windows and 20 JEWISH CURRENTS the “Whites-Only” signs that were ubiquitous in For American readers with some knowledge of my neighborhood in Pretoria. One night, together the anti-apartheid struggle and with an interest in with a couple of my Jewish friends, I removed a the role of the Jewish community in South Africa, “Whites Only” sign from the neighborhood post The Jews in South Africa provides a fascinating office. Although I felt a teenage sense of bravado, overview. Still, it left me desiring more in-depth this token act generated an even stronger feeling analysis of some questions that have not previ- of impotence, alongside the fear of being caught. The ously received much attention, at least outside of atmosphere of fear and paranoia that ruled below the academic circles. surface of white South African normalcy kept most Some of these questions are political: Were people who objected to apartheid in line. pressures placed on the rabbinate to refrain from The South African Jewry yearbook included a speaking out against apartheid, or was this largely “Who’s Who” in South African Jewry. While the a personal decision? Other questions are historical: hundreds listed include bottle (liquor) store owners Why did the East European immigrants to South and prominent jewelers, nowhere did luminaries Africa acculturate within English-speaking society appear such as Nadine Gordimer, or anti-apartheid in overwhelming numbers (over 90 percent spoke leaders such as Albie Sachs, Ruth First, Ronnie English), rather than learning to speak Afrikaans, Kasrils, or Joe Slovo. They included only Helen which was closer linguistically to Yiddish? (Yid- Suzman, the sole liberal opponent of apartheid dish, Afrikaans and Dutch are all considered con- within the white Parliament, who was as far left as tinental West Germanic tongues, in contrast with the editors were willing to go. By contrast, authors the other Germanic branch, Anglo-Frisian, which Richard Mendelsohn and Milton Shain address includes English.) I imagine that the largely urban- head-on the complex relationship between Jews ized and worldly Jewish immigrants were more and other communities in South Africa, with sec- likely to learn English in their quest for upward tions entitled, “The Jewish Workers’ Club,” “Bold mobility, but the book does not directly address Women: Challenging the Status Quo,” “Roads to this issue.
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