Splendid line-up to celebrate community’s 175 years in SA

SUZANNE BELLING

PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED

Pictured: The old shul in the Gardens.

Co-ordinator Daphne Miller told SA Jewish Report that the whole community would be involved. “It is commemorative, celebratory and positive,” she said.

Gavin Morris, director of the SA Jewish Museum, says the anniversary of Jewish communal life in South Africa “is a wonderful opportunity for us as a community to celebrate our history. The impact of our small community in South Africa cannot be understated.

“In these past 175 years Jews have been among the leaders in all spheres of South African life. We should use this opportunity to share and celebrate our past, our present and our future.”

Rabbi Osher Feldman, spiritual leader of the Great Synagogue – the Gardens Shul – the first shul founded in South Africa, says the Jewish community here “is special and unique in so many ways and a milestone such as this gives us the opportunity to celebrate the vibrancy of our wonderful community and its many significant contributions over the years, both locally and abroad.

“It is humbling for me to be serving the congregation where it all began 175 years ago and I look forward to celebrating not only the glorious past of South African Jewry but its thriving and prosperous future as well.”

The Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who grew up in Cape Town, has accepted an invitation to spend Shabbat at the Great Synagogue on August 13/14 and the Gardens Shul will hold a gala dinner on August 16.

Guest speakers throughout the celebratory period will include lawyer David Bloomberg, who became the youngest mayor of Cape Town in 1973. He is a writer and was a keen supporter of the arts.

The programme will also include two former Cape chairman of the Jewish Board of Deputies, Mr Justice Dennis Davis (on the Jewish contribution of law) and international businessman Philip Krawitz, who will speak on the business world.

Premier of the Western Cape Helen Zille will address the community on her Jewish roots, while UCT’s Professor Howard Phillips will give a lecture on “The Founders” and will lead a historic walk.

Gwynne Robins, deputy director of the Cape Board, wrote a brief history of the community for the occasion, saying the community was initiated by English Jews who arrived with the 1820 Settlers.

Businessman Benjamin Norden retired to Cape Town and arranged the first Jewish service in his home on Yom Kippur, September 26, 1941. The first purpose-built synagogue was constructed in 1863. It is now the entrance to the South African Jewish Museum, next door to the Gardens Shul.

There have been 13 Jewish mayors of Cape Town since 1904, the year in which Mayor Hyman Lieberman opened the new city hall and also opened the new synagogue, today known as the Gardens Shul.

The increase in the Jewish population concerned the government and various attempts were made to stop their admission to the Cape, including the Cape Immigration Restriction Act of 1902. [This led to the formation of the Cape Board, under Morris Alexander, to oppose the Act.]

“At present there are 16 000 Jews in Cape Town who, while maintaining their own schools, synagogues and welfare organisations, are well-integrated into the society as proud Jewish South Africans,” Robins wrote.

Eric Marx, chairman of the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies, said that for the past “12 years of the Cape Town Jewish community’s 175-year history, the Jewish Board of Deputies has been marching in tandem with the community as the umbrella organisation protecting and promoting their civil rights and interests, and working for the betterment of relations between Jews and all other people based on mutual respect, understanding and goodwill. 

“We are invested in the future of South Africa and proud of the contribution that the Jewish citizens have made to Cape Town and South Africa and its citizens. We remain dedicated to doing our part to promote social development and upliftment.”

* The SA Jewish Report will report on the events over the next few months.