Voices
Disagreeing with some of Howard Feldman’s remarks
I refer to Howard Feldman’s column in last week’s paper, concerning minyanim. I am a little surprised by his remarks concerning picking “bits of bacon from salads”, “removing bread from cheeseburgers”, Yom Kippur dances, the implication of skimpy dress for formal occasions practised by “Traditional” Jews 40 years ago.
Maurice Skikne, Johannesburg
By that he implies Jewish Johannesburg behaviour in the mid-1970s. I find that a little exaggerated, to say the least:
1. Yom Kippur dances came to a halt in the later 1950s.
2. I grew up on the East Rand and one never experienced women arriving for shul services skimpily dressed. In fact, most dressed pretty modestly; I have a pretty good memory. Further, the fashion was to wear fancy hats rather than sheitels, which were not freely available!
3. Jewish day schools were started, if I recall, in the 1960s, the old age home (Meishefs’ Keinmim) already existed in Doornfontein from the 1930s or earlier. Our Parents Home was built in the late 1940s, The Zionist Record and Jewish Chronicle and regular journals, were already being published from before the Second World War. I remember two yeshivot in the Doornfontein district from the 1930s.
It took the arrival of the Lubavitch Foundation, and Ohr Somayach shlichim to “switch on” almost the whole of South African Jewry to become more observant than before this. This has had an enormous influence on most Jews, both in South Africa and in fact worldwide.
Coming to shul by car is another issue entirely. Would you require disabled, or aged persons, to walk sometimes three to four kilometres to get to shul? That would not be on. Would that there were more shtieblach near to those persons!
I thus request Mr Feldman to correct some of his remarks.