Historic Gardens Shul still plays a vital role

DAVID SAKS

On September 26, 1841, Norden and 16 other adult men gathered there on Erev Yom Kippur to form the first recorded minyan in southern Africa. Thus was born Tikvath Yisrael – The Hope of Israel – later to be known as the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation. The “Mother Congregation” of South African Jewry, it continues to play a significant role in Cape Town Jewish life to this day.

Cape Town’s first synagogue was built in 1849, next to what are today the Parliament Buildings. That year also saw the appointment, short-lived though it proved to be, of the country’s first Jewish clergyman, Rev Isaac Pulver (dismayed by the still low standards of observance, he departed for Australia two years later and was replaced by Rev Joel Rabinowitz.

In 1863, the congregation moved into larger building in Government Avenue, just a few hundred metres away. Today, this forms part of the South African Jewish Museum complex.

The congregation moved into its third and final home, conveniently located right next to the old building, in 1905. Previously referred to as the Great Synagogue, but now more commonly called the Gardens Shul (since it adjoins the famous Company Gardens), the synagogue is celebrating its 110^th anniversary this year.

Like its counterpart in Wolmarans Street in Johannesburg, Cape Town’s Great Synagogue, itself a magnificent, ornate structure, served as the de facto headquarters for Cape Jewry. It was the seat of the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish congregations of the then Cape Province, as well as of South West Africa and the Sephardi Congregation of Rhodesia (only since 1986 has South Africa had one Chief Rabbi for the whole country).

Like Wolmarans Street, it also took the lead in fostering Jewish religious education, and it was there that the community at large has gathered for such important prayer meetings as the Day of Mourning for victims of Nazism (1942) and, more recently, the memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin following his assassination in 1995.

The membership of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation progressively declined with the move of most of the Jewish population from the City Bowl area to suburbia. However, it gained a new lease of life through becoming incorporated within a new and vibrant Jewish campus from the late 1990s onwards. That campus today includes the SA Jewish Museum, the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, the Jacob Gitlin Library, function and conference centres and a restaurant and book shop.

As a result, the membership of the congregation picked up steadily. Today numbering some 800 souls under the current spiritual leadership of Rabbi Osher Feldman, it once again has a full complement of clergy, as well as world-class choir, and important public prayer gatherings continue to be held at its historic premises.