Abba Eban and The Zionistic Jews of South Africa

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Jews were immigrating to South Africa.  They came mainly from Lithuania via Ireland in the early   19th century.  Many were from Eastern Europe after gold was discovered toward the end of the 19th century.  The 1st synagogue was organized in Capetown in 1841.  Many of the Jewish settlers were traders and peddlers, traveling among the Boer farmers.  Later, they tended to gravitate to the towns. "There were a few thousand Jews in South Africa who had immigrated there from England and Germany.  Many of them had become immensely wealthy mining magnates, like Barmato, Oppenheimer, Joel, Philips and Albu.  They despised us as "greeners" and we loathed and disdained them, not because they were so rich---many of our best Zionists were very affluent, we had nothing against dear, lovely money as such,---but because they were assimilationists, would-be  "passers" when married their children to Christians, and even got converted.  We were all Zionists." So said the son of Gluckman, reporter for the Jerusalem Post in 1983.  

Johannesburg became the main center of Jewish settlement.  Jews early enjoyed political equality in Cape Colony and Natal, but obtained it in the TRANSVAAL only after the 2nd Boer War.  The Second Boer War, also known as the Boer War, the Anglo-Boer War, or the South African War, was fought between the British Empire and two independent Boer states, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, over the Empire's influence in South Africa.

A considerable immigration followed World War I, stemming mainly from Lithuania.  Restrictions imposed during the 1930s limited the influx, although many German Jews were able to settle in South Africa.  After 1939, Jewish immigration was small, although it increased somewhat in the late 1980s.  

Emigration, formerly largely directed to Israel, was mainly to other English-speaking countries by 1992.  

The community is well-organized with a high degree of centralization, with the Board of Deputies as its representative organization and a strong Zionist Federation.  The principal congregations in both Johannesburg (Jewish population by 1992 was 63,620) and Cape Town (Jewish population of Cape Peninsula: 28,000) had their own rabbis.   Chief Rabbis and 65 synagogues are affiliated to the Orthodox Federation of Synagogues.  A Reform movement, started in 1933, has 14 affiliated congregational   There is a wide network of Jewish education, with 69 nursery schools, 10 primary schools and 8 high schools by 1992.  South Africa has an extensive Jewish press and widespread cultural activities.  

The Jewish population in 1990 was 120,000.  Jewish  population of South Africa, study reveals, totals 52,300 today – a drop of 25 percent since the last count in 2001.  Many are considering leaving for Israel.  About 15 percent of South African Jews say they are likely to leave the country within the next five years, with Israel by far their preferred destination, according to a comprehensive study of South African Jewry published this week. The top reason given was concerns about the future political stability of South Africa.

                                                              

Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban; 2 February 1915 – 17 November 2002) was an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages of South Africa.  Abba Eban was from South Africa.  Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 2 February 1915 to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Eban moved to the United Kingdom at an early age. As a child, he recalled being sent to his grandfather's house every weekend to study the Hebrew language, Talmud, and Biblical literature. He lived for a period of time in Belfast.

He attended St Olave's Grammar School, then Southwark and read Classics and Oriental languages at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he achieved a double first. During his time at University and afterwards, Eban was highly involved in the Federation of Zionist Youth and was editor of its ideological journal, The Young Zionist. 

During his career, he was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

His comment that Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" (i.e., for peace), made after the Geneva peace talks in December 1973, is often quoted.

Eban was at times criticized for not voicing his opinions in Israel's internal debate. However, he was generally known to be on the "dovish" side of Israeli politics and was increasingly outspoken after leaving the cabinet. In 1977 and 1981, it was widely understood that Shimon Peres intended to name Eban Foreign Minister, had the Labor Party won those elections. Eban was offered the chance to serve as minister without portfolio in the 1984 national unity government, but chose to serve instead as Chair of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from 1984 to 1988.                                                                        

             Stanley Goldfoot, born May 2 1914 in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa,  was our 2nd-3rd cousin. His parents were Simon Goldfoot of either Ireland or Telsiai, Lithuania and Sarah Tavriger of England.   I found him in his home in Jerusalem and was able to meet with him several times. Grandparents were Lithuanians, Solomon Goldfus and Chaia Feiga Fridjhon.   He had been the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group, a group of young men before 1948 that fought against the British, etc.  His family had gone to Ireland like my grandfather did from Lithuania, and from there to South Africa, which mine did not.  Instead he opted for the USA.  Stanley had a beautiful home in Jerusalem. When I met him in 1980-81, he had the very same slim physique.      Stanley looked a lot like my Uncle Charlie, I think.  Here he is with his 1st wife and two girls, probably at Tel Aviv's beach. 

He had made trips to the USA and spoke in amphi-theaters as large as football fields about Israel.  His goal was to get the equipment that could xray the ground and see if there were objects underneath.  He gave me a scroll of the plans for the 3rd Temple of which I had since lost.  In 1981, I thought that this was so amazing.  We met at the King David Hotel, and he said that he would know me.  I didn't have to give him my description.  I was just proud of myself for having found his phone number in an all-Hebrew telephone directory!  Stanley had the most amazing to me, an English accent that was actually South African.  Hearing his voice made me ashamed of my plain American accented voice, so much less educated-sounding.  He did have a great speaking voice, and died in November  2006 in Jerusalem at 92 years 6 months 22 days.                 

Max Gluckman or Herman Max Gluckman (/ˈɡlʌkmən/; 26 January 1911 – 13 April 1975) in Jerusalem, and was a South African and British social anthropologist. He is best known as the founder of the Manchester School of anthropology. Gluckman was born in Johannesburg in 1911. Like many of the other anthropologists he later worked with, he was Jewish. He was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained a BA in 1930. Although he intended to study law, he became interested in anthropology and studied under Winifred Hoernle. He earned the equivalent of an MA at Witwatersrand in 1934 and then received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Exeter College, Oxford.  He was esteemed for his contributions to political and legal anthropology, particularly his analyses of the cultural and social dimensions of law and politics among African peoples. Examining feud and conflict, he considered their relation to cultural change in Custom and Conflict in Africa (1955). After field study in Zululand (1936–38), Gluckman became assistant anthropologist with the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute of Northern Rhodesia and made studies in Barotseland (1939–41).

The Jerusalem Post Magazine-Newspaper  of Friday, September 23, 1983 on page 12, had an interesting article on the Jews of South Africa. I had found our grandfather Nathan in Ireland living with another Goldfoot relative.  They were both from Lithuania.   I kept that article with a few others and just ran across them again.  It mentions that they were great Zionists.  There had been for some decades, 120,000 Jews in South Africa, the overwhelming majority of them being Litvaks--ie, they, or their parents, or their grandparents, or their great-grandparents were born in Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, Vitebsk, Minsk or Mogilev. (or other towns in Lithuania like Telsiai or Papile)  

"Why the Zionists so dominated the lives of the Jewish community is a subject that fascinated Gideon Shimoni, of the Hebrew University's Institute of Contemporary Jewry, who wrote an authoritative book on Jews and Zionism:  the South African Experience.  This was remarkably good  up to a point, this point being the inadequate attention he paid to certain Zionists I revered throughout my boyhood.  In no other country did Zionists dominate organized Jewish life to the same extent as in South Africa." Gluckman of Jerusalem Post 1983.

"Zionism was to my brothers, my sister and me like gin to Eliza Doolittle's aunt.  Our mother, Katie Gluckmann, was to Southern African Zionism what Henrietta Szold was to American Zionism.  She carried the flag, and fought the good fight, in every city and dorp (hamlet) between the Congo and Cape Agulhas.  (My cousin once put it to her that she should carry a few lines, like stockings or blouses, to sell to the Jews in between indoctrinating and inspiring them).  She was the 1st woman to be elected to the S.A. Zionist Federation, and was chairman for endless years of the Keren Kayemet in South Africa.  There in a family tradition that she suggested the introduction of the blue box." Gluckman   

As Gideon Shimoni points out in a thoughtful brochure issued for the Beth Hatefutsoth exhibition, South Africa was very different from America as far as the Jews were concerned.

While all the whites belonged to a privileged minority compared to the blacks, there were deep and bitter divisions and hatreds among the whites.  The Afrikaners never got over the traumatic experience of the Boer War.  The Jews, largely identified with the English-speaking section, were despised by both the Afrikaners and the English.  Social anti-Semitism was a deeply rooted phenomenon. 

It is true that Jews, Italians and Irish suffered at the hands of the WASP's (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) in America, but there was an overriding drive in the U.S. for everyone to become American in a melting-pot,---there was no such drive in South Africa.  We were South African patriots, but we were also well aware of the gulfs between us and the other sections of the white population.  We loved South Africa for its incredible beauty and its gracious way of life, but we knew that other South African did not love us.

We grew up trying to reconcile 2 somewhat contradictory dreams---to play cricket for South Africa and to emigrate to what was then Palestine.  by Gluckman, of Jerusalem Post 1983

And there my piece of the article ended.  How many immigrated to Palestine?  They could have been in the great numbers of making aliyah from 1882 on in 5 great migrations.

South African Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the South African Jewish communities, who now reside within the state of Israel. They number around 20,000.  

A number of South African Jews settled in Israel, forming a South African community in Israel. Perhaps the most famous South African community founded in Israel is Savyon, which remains the wealthiest suburb in Israel. Large houses were built in the style that the community was accustomed to from their life in South Africa, each with a pool, and developed around a country club.

1,400,000 Immigrants went to Israel in 24 years.  Israel went from 650,000 in May 1948 to 3,164,000 by May 1972.  Of the increment, 1,400,000 are immigrants (olim).  There had been 4 major waves of immigration between them immigration continued, but in reduced volume.  

1. May 1948-and end of 1961,  754,800 olim entered Israel doubling its population including:

2. Refugees from the Holocaust in Europe--of Poland, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia

3. Entire Jewish communities from Arab countries:  121,000 out of 130,000 of Iraq Jews;  44,000 out of 45,000 of Yemen Jews;  30,500 out of 35,000 of Libyan Jews

4. 1955-1957:  165,000 Jews from Morocco, Tunisia, Poland and other countries,  many Romanians came under family reunification plan.

5. 1961-1964:  215,056 came from Eastern Europe and North Africa

Since the SIX DAY WAR of 1967, there was a new wave of immigration from countries in North and South American, Western Europe and the Soviet Union.  by the end of 1972,, about 200,000 immigrants had arrived.  

  Here's some numbers I've found:

1948	1949	1950	1951	1952	1953	1948-53
Eastern Europe
Romania	17678	13595	47041	40625	3712	61	122712
Poland	28788	47331	25071	2529	264	225	104208
Bulgaria	15091	20008	1000	1142	461	359	38061
Czechoslovakia	2115	15685	263	150	24	10	18247
Hungary	3463	6842	2302	1022	133	224	13986
Soviet Union	1175	3230	2618	689	198	216	8126
Yugoslavia	4126	2470	427	572	88	14	7697
Total	72436	109161	78722	46729	4880	1109	313037
Other Europe
Germany	1422	5329	1439	662	142	100	9094
France	640	1653	1165	548	227	117	4350
Austria	395	1618	746	233	76	45	3113
United Kingdom	501	756	581	302	233	140	2513
Greece	175	1364	343	122	46	71	2121
Italy	530	501	242	142	95	37	1547
Netherlands	188	367	265	282	112	95	1309
Belgium	-	615	297	196	51	44	1203
Total	3851	12203	5078	2487	982	649	25250

Resource;

The Jerusalem Post Magazine , Friday, September 23, 1983, page 12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Gluckman

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Gluckman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Jews_in_Israel#:~:text=South%20African%20Jews%20in%20Israel%20are%20immigrants%20and%20descendants%20of,They%20number%20around%2020%2C000.