At 100, looking back on a life well lived

SUZANNE BELLING

PHOTOGRAPH BY SUZANNE BELLING

The Oxford Synagogue which she terms “my baby”, is her second home – she lives across the road and has hardly missed a Shabbat morning service there, save when she travelled 30 times to the US to see her daughter Leone Abroms, sister Essie Shubitz (98), her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the rest of her family, many of whom will be in Johannesburg for her party at the Killarney Golf Club.

When she turned 99, she decided her travels had ended. She also stopped living alone and doing her own cooking and housekeeping, employing a live-in caregiver.

Her spiritual leader, Rabbi Yossi Chaikin, brought her “astonishing achievements” to the attention of Jewish Report.

Copelowitz is an institution in the shul, where she and her friend Sari Desatnik taught bridge and where she still plays the game. They originally started bridge classes at the Sydenham-Highlands North Hebrew Congregation.

The two women also founded the Sunshine Club – bingo for seniors – for the Union of Jewish Women.

Copelowitz who recalls travelling in an ox wagon and horse and cart, says she has been blessed with good health and a wonderful family.

“She has scarcely been to a doctor and her regular medication comprises only four pills a day,” says her great-niece Melanie Ossip.

This sprightly centenarian amazes everyone with her computer literacy, sending her own e-mails and messages. She is also an avid reader, spending half the day with her books “when I don’t have visitors”.

She was born into a religious Orthodox family, with her father Yitzchak Katz, an intellectual and a Torah scholar. Her father acted as a reverend for the Lions Shul (Doornfontein Hebrew Congregation). “I learnt Hebrew and Torah from him and my brother, Morris, and ended up teaching Hebrew myself.”

Copelowitz was one of eight children and helped to run the household.  “Although I always wanted to be a doctor,” she says, she ended up becoming a shorthand typist.

She attended Jewish Guild Elementary School and then Athlone Girls’ High. Her working career, however, was short-lived when she met and married a distant relative, Louis Copelowitz, who came to South Africa at the height of the Lithuanian and Polish immigration.

“We all gathered in my parents’ home, which was a meeting place for the immigrants. It was very hard for my husband initially as he had to learn English, but he found work in a furniture factory.” Later, he bought up lots of properties and made a good living.

The couple had four children – Stanley, Ethne, Ivan and Leone. Stanley and Ethne have since passed on.

In 1969 she and her husband were involved in a terrible car accident. He was killed and her legs were badly burnt. She took over the management of their properties and only sold them when she turned 95.

She played bowls until recently and only stopped driving in her nineties.

Rabbi Chaikin paid tribute to this stalwart of his congregation. “I wish her many more happy healthy years and naches from her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” he said.