History of the Jews in South Africa
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The Jewish community in South Africa is the largest in Africa, and, although shrinking due to emigration, it remains one of the most Orthodox communities in the world.
Origins
The Jewish history of South Africa began, indirectly, some time before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, by the participation of certain astronomers and cartographers in the Portuguese discovery of the sea-route to lndia. There were Jews among the directors of the Dutch East India Company, which for 150 years administered the colony at the Cape of Good Hope. During the seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century the state religion alone was allowed to be publicly observed; but on July 25, 1804, the Dutch commissioner-general Jacob Abraham de Mist, by a proclamation whose provisions were annulled at the English occupation of 1806 and were not reestablished till 1820, instituted in the colony religious equality for all persons, irrespective of creed.
Jews did not arrive in any numbers at Cape Town before the 1820s. The first congregation in South Africa was founded in Cape Town in Nov., 1841, and the initial service was held in the house of Benjamin Norden, at the corner of Weltevreden and Hof streets. Benjamin Norden, Simeon Markus, together with a score of others arriving in the early thirties, were commercial pioneers, especially the Mosenthal brothers -- Julius, Adolph, and James Mosenthal -- who started a major wool industry. By their enterprise in going to Asia and returning with thirty Angora goats in 1856 they became the originators of the mohair industry. Aaron and Daniel de Pass were the first to open up Namaqualand, and for many years (1849-86) were the largest shipowners in Cape Town, and leaders of the sealing, whaling, and fishing industries. Jews were among the first to take to ostrich-farming and plaid a role in the early diamond industry.
Jews also played some part in early South African politics. Capt. Joshua Norden was shot at the head of his Mounted Burghers in the Kafir war of 1846; Lieut. Elias de Pass fought in the Kafir war of 1849. Julius Mosenthal (1818-80), brother of the poet S. Mosenthal of Vienna, was a member of the Cape Parliament in the fifties. Simeon Jacobs, C.M.G. (1832-83), who was judge in the Supreme Court of the Cape of Good Hope, as the acting attorney-general of Cape Colony introduced and carried in 1872 the Cape Colony Responsible Government Bill and the Voluntary Bill (abolishing state aid to the Anglican Church), for both of which bills Saul Solomon, the member for Cape Town, had fought for decades. Saul Solomon (b. St. Helena May 25, 1817; d. Oct. 16, 1892), the leader of the Liberal party, has been called the "Cape Disraeli." He several times declined the premiership and was invited into the first responsible ministry, formed by Sir John Molteno. Like Disraeli, too, he early left the ranks of Judaism.
At the same time, the Jews faced substantial anti-Semitism. Though freedom of worship was granted to all residents in 1870, the revised "Grondwet" of 1894 still debarred Jews and Catholics from military posts, from the positions of president, state secretary, or magistrate, from membership in the First and Second Volksraad, and from superintendencies of natives and mines. All instruction was to be given in a Christian and Protestant spirit, and Jewish and Catholic teachers and children were to be excluded from state-subsidized schools. Before the Boer War, Jews were often considered uitlanders, foreigners excluded from the mainstream of South African life.
The Boer Wars
Jews fought on both sides during the Boer War. Some of the most heroic deeds of the three years' Boer war—as the Gun Hill incident before Ladysmith—were due to the dash and daring of Jewish soldiers like Major Karri Davies. Nearly 2,800 Jews fought on the British side, and, according to careful enumeration, the London "Spectator" declared that the percentage of Jewish soldiers killed (125) in the war was relatively the largest of all. Within the Boer ranks the story of the Jew is much the same. They were with the "Vierkleur" on every battle-field; Jewish "Irreconcilables" fought to the bitter end, and several Jewish prisoners were to be found at St. Helena, Bermuda, and Ceylon. dfg
From Independence through World War II
Although the Jews were allowed equal rights after the Boer War, they again became subject to persecution in the days leading up to World War II. In 1930, the Quota Act restricted Jews from entering South Africa by 1936, followed by The Aliens Act, which tightened restrictions. Some Jews were able to enter the country, but many were unable to do so. Many Afrikaners felt sympathy for Nazi Germany, and organizations like Louis Weichardt’s "Grayshirts" were openly anti-semitic. After the War, the situation began to improve, and a large number of South African Jews, generally a fairly Zionist community, left to join the new nation of Israel.
Apartheid
Though the official organizations of South African Jewry were silent on apartheid until South Africa’s National Congress of the Jewish Board of Deputies passed an anti-apartheid resolution in 1980, Jews played a role in the anti-apartheid struggle, especially activists like Helen Suzman, Joe Slovo, Ronnie Kasrils, and Albie Sachs. Of the 17 members of the African National Congress arrested in 1963, for anti-apartheid activities, all five whites arrested were Jewish. However, many Jews remained silent, or emigrated to Israel (which was vocal in its condemnation of South Africa's racist policies), during the apartheid period.
Anti-apartheid violence tore South Africa apart throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. In 1980, after 77 years of neutrality, South Africa’s National Congress of the Jewish Board of Deputies passed a resolution urging "all concerned [people] and, in particular, members of our community to cooperate in securing the immediate amelioration and ultimate removal of all unjust discriminatory laws and practices based on race, creed, or colour." This inspired some Jews to intensify their anti-apartheid activism, but the bulk of the community either emigrated or avoided public conflict with the National Party government.
Today
After the community peaked in the 1970s, 80,000 Jews, the majority Orthodox, remain in South Africa. Despite low intermarriage rates and little antisemitism, approximately 1,800 Jews leave the country every year, mostly for economic reasons, mostly to Israel and Australia.