Jewish Affairs - Pesach 2019
This issue includes a special focus on Jewish culture and heritage. It includes contributions on music in the Bible and Judaism in general by Cecil Bloom, the Tu B'Shvat festival, past and present, by Henia Bryer and an overview of the Barmitzvah ceremony and how it has evolved over time by Lionel Slier. Closer to home, the indefatigable Gwynne Schrire has, with much relish investigated the origins, analysed the contents and considered the overall historical context of a late Victorian-era family scrap album which recently came to light in and which her research reveals belonged to the family of Ellia Marks, younger brother of Sammy. Librarian and archivist Juan-Paul Burke has followed up on his Pesach 2018 bibliography listing articles, theses and books pertaining to SA Jewry and Jewish Studies with a similar listing for 2018, together with additional items for the previous listing that have since come to light. In the concluding article of the section, engineer Lyonell Fliss shares his vision for creating an observation tower and heritage centre on Mount Scopus as a way of affirming and publicizing the millennia-old Jewish roots in the Holy City.
Part of the abiding value of Jewish Affairs is that it provides a forum in which the lives, achievements and contributions of former prominent SA Jews to be evaluated and recorded. In the subsection 'Memoirs and Mentschen', anti-apartheid activist, author and journalist Paul Trewhela writes on the trade unionist, businessman, philanthropist and Jewish communal worker Morris Isaacson, after whom a famous school in Soweto is named, while Marge Clouts looks at the life-long involvement of her late mother, Sarah Leftwich, in furthering the Zionist cause in South Africa.
'Holocaust Echoes' features the final instalment of Holocaust survivor and educator Don Krausz's power and unforgettable memoir 'Child of the Concentration Camp'. A hitherto unpublished essay by the late Solly Kessler, a leading member of the SAJBD in Cape Town, on how the Herschel Grynszpan affair was used to give impetus to the unfolding annihilation of European Jewry followed by Isaac Reznik's monograph on Kindertransport hero Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld completes the section. Zita Nurok's factually-based short story 'A house with stories to tell' also has a Holocaust theme.
The issue concludes with the editor's review of The Last Hurrah, Graham Viney's account of the 1947 Royal Visit to SA and the insights this now largely forgotten episode provides into the general milieu and mind-set of a society (including its Jewish community) on the brink of radical, unanticipated, political change.
On behalf of the Jewish Affairs editorial board, I wish everyone a Chag Pesach Kasher v'Sameach.
Read the publication here.