History, not prophecy

New book follows Jewish immigration to S. Africa, community that resulted.

By DAVID E. KAPLAN
South Africa Jews 88 248 (photo credit: David Kaplan)
South Africa Jews 88 248
(photo credit: David Kaplan)
Some 400 South Africans from across Israel braved inclement weather to attend the Israel launch of the book The Jews in South Africa at the Open University in Ra'anana last Thursday. The authors, Professor Richard Mendelsohn and Professor Milton Shain, flew in from South Africa for the event - which was organized by the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) - following previous addresses to South African Jewish audiences across the Jewish world. The tour was part of "the travelling Kaplan circus," quipped Shain, director of the Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town. Mendel Kaplan, a former chairman of the board of governors of the Jewish Agency and founder of the Kaplan Center, introduced the speakers, as he did recently in the UK. Beginning with the earliest Jewish immigrants to South Africa, the book traces the bumpy journey of this mainly "Litvak" community that hailed from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Belarus. It tracks the evolution from fragile early foundations to a robust and proudly Jewish community, buttressed along the way by the social and political currents that mapped South Africa's turbulent history. The complexity and ambiguities confronting this community were daunting; in the 1930s it had to endure anti-Semitism from South Africa's Nazi sympathizers, and a decade later it had to grapple with the moral dilemmas of apartheid. Far from a dry historical treatise, "We aimed to produce a work that would be readable and reach as wide an audience as possible," explained Mendelsohn, who lectured for many years in the history department at UCT. The Jews in South Africa is a richly illustrated story - a swatch of Jewish life "from the bimah and the boardroom to the bowling green." (Bowls is the most popular sport of Jews in South Africa, whose expatriates introduced it into Israel). An interesting transformation, revealed Shain, was how "South African Jews" became "Jewish South Africans." With the dramatic surge in religiosity in the last quarter of the 20th century, the once proudly Zionist community emerged into a "proudly" Jewish community. The mantra today, instituted by the Chief Rabbinate, is "You can be proudly Jewish in South Africa." However, it is not without certain caveats. While there is "today in the New South Africa no anti-Semitism, anti-Israel sentiment is rampant, often very ugly and ignorant," says Shain. Whether this will influence people in the future to leave South Africa, "only time will tell." However, in light of disturbing developments in South Africa subsequent to the period of study in the book which ends in 2007, Mendelsohn admits that they may have arrived at different conclusion vis-à-vis the "definite optimism of the Jewish community." The unexpected violence in "stable" Kenya, the ongoing catastrophe in neighboring Zimbabwe, the souring crime, the grotesque display of xenophobia and electricity outages "have quite clearly unsettled people. I can only speak of what I sense; we have no empirical indicators as such of current community sentiment." In response to comments about the "shallow nature" of South African Zionism - alluding to the many South African emigrants that opted to move to the USA and Australia rather than Israel - Kaplan argued that aliya from South Africa was ideologically motivated. "Having spent much of my life directing people to Israel," he said, reflecting on his tenure as chairman of the Jewish Agency during the mass aliya of Russians and Ethiopians when Israel offered a refuge, "South African aliya... was always one of choice. You did not have to come here; you chose to come. This is something you can be truly proud of." Asked to comment on where South Africa's Jewish community - now numbering some 65,000 - would be in 20 years time, Shain replied, "I am a historian, not a prophet." The audience will have to wait for a "second edition in 20 years time," he quipped.