Gone but not forgotten, unearthing Joburg’s shuls

There were 43 breathtaking synagogues in Johannesburg at the turn of the 20th century and, tragically, not one of them is still standing.

They were, indeed, architectural masterpieces, which could rival their counterparts in Europe. They loomed above the streets of a city still in its infancy, with their towering domes and detailed facades catching the eye of any passer-by.

While they no longer exist, their stories remain a lasting testament to the Jews who first made Johannesburg their home.

“The stories of these synagogues are absolutely incredible,” says Rose Norwich. “They formed part of Johannesburg in the early days when it was established in 1886. Most people today don’t fully appreciate what we actually had here.”

Norwich, who recently celebrated her 100th birthday, is an authority on the early shuls which were established in Johannesburg and on the reef. An architect by profession, she undertook a study of these shuls more than 40 years ago after visiting the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York with her late husband.

“The man in charge showed me a folio of the destroyed synagogues of Poland,” she recounted. “I reflected that they had been through a war there, but that in South Africa, our shuls had fallen apart out of sheer neglect.”

Norwich returned home determined to record and account for Johannesburg’s earliest shuls. However, she found that the shuls weren’t the only things that had faded out of existence.

“There was simply no information available. No one seemed to have taken any notice of the shuls or made records of them. No one had preserved them or accounted for them. There was nothing.”

Encouraged by her husband and close friend, Stephen Cohen, Norwich decided to address the issue by preparing a master’s dissertation on the subject, returning to university at the age of 66. Beginning in 1886 (when Jews first settled in the Witwatersrand), she charted the stories of the first shuls built in Johannesburg, concluding her study in the 1930s.

Norwich received a list of the city’s shuls from the Federation of Synagogues, but it was woefully incomplete. After obtaining the few photographs housed at the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), she set off on an exhaustive search.

“I trawled through every archive imaginable,” she says. “From the library of the SAJBD, I moved on to the government archives, museums, university collections, and many more. I was given access to all council plans as well as I wanted to find out everything I could about these shuls and what they had looked like.

“I went to a woman called Nola Green at the city council and begged her to help me. She said that plans had been moved from the Town Hall to Hillbrow, adding that someone had found people tearing up the plans. Some had been saved and taken to the Africana Museum [now Museum Africa], so she said I should go there.

“I found four of five beautiful plans there. I had to search everywhere, but there they were.”

Norwich devoted four years to the dissertation, accounting for 43 of Johannesburg’s first shuls. Their stories captivated her.

“The President Street Synagogue was the very first,” she says. “It ran between 1889 and 1926. They had used other premises before, including the Rand Club, for services on high holy days. Later they got some land from the government, but they sold it because they didn’t like it.”

Because no plan of the shul existed, Norwich had to recreate it using a few photographs of the building she’d found during her search.

“The shul was copied from a famous German synagogue, and it was fascinating to see how they had replicated it. It didn’t last very long because there was an argument. They had a rabbi, Mark Harris, that people didn’t like, so the congregation split, and a new congregation was formed.”

Following the split, a magnificent shul was constructed on the Wanderers Park, named the Park Synagogue. The shul was opened by none other than President Paul Kruger in 1892, but lasted only until 1914.

Says Norwich, “Kruger actually gave them the ground, and they established a shul, a school, and a minister’s house on the site. I hunted for photos of the site and ended up at RAU [Rand Afrikaans University]. I found a photo there that showed the area and noticed the distinctive dome of the shul in the image.

“That picture was worth its weight in gold. Some people wouldn’t give tuppence for it, but it was proof that the shul had once stood there.”

The shul was located near what was called the Telephone Tower. When a railway company announced its intention to construct headquarters in the area, it bought out the shul, converting part of the building into its offices. The money from the sale went towards building what would become the Doornfontein Shul.

“I knew about the sale only because of an article I found at the military museum,” says Norwich. “It became a very personal thing, that search. I hunted high and low.”

Norwich also discovered a shul which had stood at the end of Fox Street in the centre of town, known as the Beth Hamedrash.

“An Orthodox group bought a little house in 1893,” she says. “It was a tiny space. There are stories of how people had to come in small groups, people with prams coming in, and then the next lot because space was so limited.”

“I struggled to identify the plans because it looked like an ordinary house, but eventually realised that an odd feature in it was in fact the women’s gallery. That was how I knew it was a shul.”

The shul was demolished and larger premises built in 1912, only to be demolished later. The property was sold, and no photographs of the original building survive.

There were also shuls that were planned but never built. Such was the case with the End Street Synagogue in Doornfontein.

Says Norwich, “They were in the process of building and had laid the foundation in 1906, but they never built it. They didn’t have the money, and later donated it to a Catholic nun, Kate O’Brien.”

“There’s only one picture that exists of that space. The foundation stone that sits on display at Great Park Synagogue actually comes from there.”

By the time Norwich began her research in 1988, only nine of the 43 shuls she studied still stood. None of them exist today.

“It’s a loss we have to accept,” she concludes. “Jews moved away from these areas, they built new synagogues and established new communities. It’s a great shame that they are no more, but it was inevitable.

“People always migrate, so be careful where you build a shul, because people won’t always stay there.”