I visited the Jewish Studies Library at the UCT Kaplan Centre on Upper Campus this afternoon. I am writing a paper on South African Jewish identity both before and after the 1994 transition, so I headed to this quaint and comfortable library halfway around the world. The Kaplan Centre also houses the kosher food canteen on campus -- the same venue where I first ate the deeply unsatisfying South African hamentashen two weeks ago.
Now in the library, I found a helpful and friendly librarian writing a book on South African Yiddish Theatre who spent several years studying at Columbia/JTS in New York. I browsed the generous collection of volumes -- about a dozen fully stocked rows -- and spotted some magnificent finds (for my paper, and for pleasure). Would you believe that a book exists on the Jewish community of Zambia/N. Rhodesia? Sure enough, a title called "Zion in Africa: The Jews of Zambia" caught my eye. And the personal account of a South African Jew's aliyah to Israel during the apartheid era in Let Me Create a Paradise also struck an interest.
I saw so many familiar titles and book covers -- from my personal library in Raleigh and elsewhere -- on Israel and the American Jewish community in particular. But the library's hidden treasure (at least for me) remains the volumes dedicated to little known Jewish communities that few American Jews ever dreamed existed. Only exceedingly resourceful European Jews arranged immigration to such far away lands as Northern Rhodesia, German South West Africa and Angola -- but enough families populated the capital cities of those colonies (from roughly 1900 to the 1950s) to build synagogues, dedicate Jewish cemeteries and arrange for kosher slaughter.
The tale of African Jewry makes the millions who sailed to New York sound ordinary and trite! Lusaka, Zambia, was no Lower East Side.
Very interesting Stanton. I assume this is where you found the book on the Jews of Rhodes.
ReplyDeletei am working on the israeli festival we are holding at the JCC to celebrate israel independence day in may.
ReplyDeletewe are trying to bring in the different diaspora communities and i am working on the south african community. i am looking for info and pictures of the history of south african jews - number and dates of immigration and where they came from, history in south africa, involvement in forming and developing the state of israel, as well as current number of jews in south africa and numbers and countries of emigration. i was told to contact the kaplan center and when i googled it, i found your blog. could you please help me by forwarding this to anyone you think might be able to help me get this info or pictures. thanks so much!
happy pesach!
ruth in atlanta