Shimoni: Community and Conscience page i Community and Conscience Shimoni: Community and Conscience blank, page ii Shimoni: Community and Conscience page iii Community and Conscience ✧ Gideon Shimoni University Press of New England Shimoni: Community and Conscience page iv Brandeis University Press Published by University Press of New England, 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon, NH 03766 © 2003 by Brandeis University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 54321 Published in South Africa in 2003 by David Philip Publishers, an imprint of New Africa Books (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 46962, Glosderry 7702, Republic of South Africa. 0–86486–620–8 (David Philip paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shimoni, Gideon. Community and conscience : the Jews in apartheid South Africa / Gideon Shimoni. p. cm. — (The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry series (Unnumbered)) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–58465–329–9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jews—South Africa—History. 2. Jews—South Africa—Politics and government. 3. Zionism—South Africa—History. 4. Apartheid—South Africa—History. 5. South Africa—Race relations. 6. South Africa— Ethnic relations. I. Shimoni, Gideon. Jews and Zionism. II. Title. III. Series. DS135.S6S527 2003 968'.004924—dc21 2003004623 Grateful acknowledgment is made for the financial support of the South African Jewish Trust. A note from the author regarding figure 2: Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the photographer or copy- right holder of this image. However, this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive in- formation leading to more complete acknowledgment in subsequent printings of this book and in the meantime extend their apology for any omission. Shimoni: Community and Conscience page v The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series Jehuda Reinharz, Sylvia Fuks Fried, The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, established by a gift to Brandeis Uni- versity from Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber, is dedicated to the memory of the victims of Nazi perse- cutions between 1933 and 1945. The Institute seeks to study the history and culture of Eu- ropean Jewry in the modern period. The Institute has a special interest in studying the causes, nature, and consequences of the European Jewish catastrophe within the contexts of modern European diplomatic, intellectual, political, and social history. . , World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II , French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Interpretation of France under Two Occupations, 1914–1918/1940–1944 , Hitler in History , , The Jews in Modern France , , The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Second World War , The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism , , Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses . , The Holocaust in History -, , The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Shimoni: Community and Conscience page vi . , Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Era , , , , , The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars , From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933–1943 , The Meaning of Jewish Existence: Theological Essays 1930–1939 , Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood , The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution . , Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism , Between Mussolini and Hitler: The Jews and the Italian Authorities in France and Tunisia , Breaking the Silence: The German Who Exposed the Final Solution , From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism , With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of an Historian , The Zionist Ideology , Prisoner of Hope , Battlefields and Playgrounds Shimoni: Community and Conscience page vii , , The Boom in Contemporary Israeli Fiction , . , , Landscapes of Jewish Experience . , , Encounters with the “Holy Land”: Place, Past and Future in American Jewish Culture , State of Israel, Diaspora, and Jewish Continuity: Essays on the “Ever-Dying People” , A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry , . , . , , Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi , , , , Zionism and Religion , Zionism and the Creation of a New Society , Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany , Aharon Appelfeld: From Individual Lament to Tribal Eternity , Jews in France during World War II , Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Zionist Leader , Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman Shimoni: Community and Conscience page viii . , Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia . . -, The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine , Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art , Reading Hebrew Literature: Critical Discussions of Six Modern Texts ’ , The Pure Element of Time , Small Change: A Collection of Stories . , Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteenth-Century Polish Community . , Jews in Israel: Contemporary Social and Cultural Patterns , Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa Shimoni: Community and Conscience page ix To the memory of Hanns Saenger, refugee from Nazi Germany, South African, Jewish community leader, friend of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Shimoni: Community and Conscience blank, page x Shimoni: Community and Conscience page xi Contents Preface xiii Introduction The Jewish Community in South African Society 1 Formation of the Jewish Community 1 Accommodation to South African Race Relations 6 Emergence of the “Jewish Question” 11 Chapter 1 The Jewish Community and the Afrikaner Regime 18 Advent of Apartheid 18 Legacy of the “Jewish Question” 21 Accommodation to the Apartheid Order 29 Coping with Israel’s Intrusion 46 Chapter 2 The Political Behavior of Jews 55 Jews in the Political System 55 Accounting for Jewish Radicals 73 Jewish Liberals and the Community 94 Discord over Communal Policy 104 Chapter 3 Adapting to Reformed Apartheid 120 Reformed Apartheid 120 Shifts in Jewish Political Behavior 125 Shifts in Communal Policy 133 The Rabbis and Reformed Apartheid 140 The Voice of Foreign Jewish Organizations 149 Chapter 4 Dissonance and Change 154 Reversion of Israel–South Africa Relations 154 Black Perceptions of the Jewish Community 165 Jewish Student Discontent 180 Budding Jewish Social Action 189 xixi Shimoni: Community and Conscience page xii Chapter 5 A Transformed Community 201 Changing Fortunes of Zionism 201 Expansion of Jewish Education 215 Turning toward Religiosity 226 Chapter 6 After Apartheid 241 Adapting to Apartheid’s Demise 241 New Communal Directions 256 Community and Conscience 264 Notes 277 Index 319 Illustrations follow page 142 xii Contents Shimoni: Community and Conscience page xiii Preface This is a study of the Jews in a particular community of the Jewish Diaspora. Its vantage point is that of a historian specializing in the contemporary history of the Jews: contemporary being understood roughly as the period of time coexten- sive with generations of people still largely active in society. This book, however, does not purport to provide a comprehensive account of the contemporary Jew- ish community in South Africa. It focuses specifically on the Jewish experience as part of a privileged white minority that dominated a society based upon a system of legalized racial discrimination. This was certainly a poignantly unusual experi- ence in the light of the painful record of racist victimization suffered by Jews in modern times. The historical record of South African whites in general remains an indelible stain on mankind’s moral conscience even after the redeeming transformation of South Africa and its negotiated reconstruction as a nonracial democracy. Yet, I am governed by the professional opinion that neither indictment nor apologia belongs to the task at hand. The historian should not presume to be a moral judge. Rather, he should aspire to the presentation of as objective, balanced, com- prehensive, and empirically documented an account as possible. This might then form a sound basis for value judgments by each and every reader who chooses to make them, universal agreement on such complex issues being unlikely in any case. The structure of this book is chronological, beginning with an introduction that recounts the most apposite aspects of the Jewish community’s origins, char- acter and experience in South African society prior to 1948. I have also incorpo- rated some revised sections of an earlier work, Jews and Zionism: The South African Experience (1910–1967), published in 1980 by Oxford University Press, Cape Town. This book has long been out of print and copyright has reverted to me as author. The last chapter of the present book deals with the Jewish community’s comportment in the period of South Africa’s negotiated transfor- mation and the institution of a nonracial democracy. Only in a section of chapter 2, in which I attempt to analyze the factors that went into the making of Jewish radicals and liberals who joined the struggle against apartheid, is the narrative’s chronological sequence partly broken. This analysis necessitated the inclusion of data relating to activities extending chronologically beyond the heyday of the apartheid program in the 1950s and 1960s and into the period of reformed or modified apartheid that ultimately culminated in its complete