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It is clear, then, that the people of South Africa are living under severe strain. Dr. Mark Nathan, a British psychiatrist working in South Africa, reports: “There is so much mental trauma in this country that, as a psychiatrist, it is difficult to distinguish classic psychiatric symptoms from a situation where people have simply reached the end of their tether.”

As a greater and greater percentage of the population are subjected to violent crime, the result has been a rising incidence of mental illness in Johannesburg and the rest of Gauteng. Both blacks and whites are suffering from psychological problems, although they are based on different reasons and occur in the context of different circumstances.

Dr. Dot Siwinska, who runs a private psychiatric practice in the affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg where most of that city’s Jews live, believes that a compou8nding factor in the psychological crisis facing South Africans is that there remains a strong social stigma against seeing a psychiatrist. Siwinska states that “we’re all suffering from the same violence-related mood disorders; there is a depression epidemic in Gauteng. Manic depression, panic disorder, substance abuse, primary and secondary depression, adjustment disorders, schizophrenia…we’re witnessing an increase in all of these. And there has been an explosion in the number of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.” She concludes by saying, “We’re living in a sick society … but while you can counsel patients about coping, you cannot reassure them that things are going to improve. Life in Gauteng is brutal. It’s the survival of the fittest.”

Many of those who are not emigrating feel tremendous stress and this is manifested in various ways. One very noticeable impact has been in the rising divorce rate. The Orthodox Chief Rabbi, Cyril Harris, has expressed great concern over the “alarmingly” high divorce rate in the Jewish community. Referring to the pressures of living in South Africa, Harris said that “…an okay marriage survives an okay situation, but it takes a strong marriage to survive a bad situation.”

Sherene Cuthbert, a researcher for pharmaceutical giant Roche, has been conducting tests on the level of stress experienced by management personnel around the world. She told one South African newspaper that “results have indicated that South Africa has one of the worlds most highly stressed populations…Apart from Bosnia and Croatia, South Africa has one of the most highly stressed populations in the world.”

Many whites, and particularly Jews, feel extremely threatened. While concerns about violence are deep and legitimate there is also an element of hysteria. Part of this may be due to the circulation of fabricated stories and the tales which have now become firmly entrenched as urban myths, as well as to exaggerated details about actual crimes. For example, Gauteng Secretary for Provincial Public Safety and Security, Azhar Cachalia, reported recently that up to seventy percent of all reported hijackings did not actually take place, but were in fact fraudulent insurance claims. Nevertheless, the result has been a new push to emigrate.

Tens of thousands of Jews had emigrated in the years before the 1994 elections, but most of those who were still in South Africa after April 1994 appeared to have made the decision to stay. Now it appears that the rising violence, in particular, is causing many young Jews to once again consider emigration. Also, many had previously applied for visas and are only now receiving them, or had received visas which are valid for a number of years which they must now either use or lose. The result has been a renewal of what had derogatorily been referred to as the “chicken run”.

Newspapers are filled with advertisements offering assistance in emigration. “Immigration – Australia, New Zealand, Canada” one such advertisement is titled. Others state: “Opportunities Abroad, “ “Free Seminar,” “Job Search and Immigration,” “Relocate” and, most directly “Have you had enough? Violence, Crime, Corruption. Falling standards of living, education and health? Free seminar – Immigration and Job search. OZ, NZ, Canada, UK, USA. Do not delay.”

Jewish newspapers are also filled with such advertisements, as are those publications specifically targeted at South African Jews, considered a valuable asset. The Jewish community in Perth, Australia, in particular, which already has a high percentage of South Africans, constantly advertises the advantage of Jewish life in Perth. Attracting South African Jewish emigrants is one way of ensuring the vitality if the Diaspora Jewish community. In Sydney, entire congregations are regarded as “South African”.

South African whites are continuing to emigrate. But, in contrast to the period immediately preceding the 1994 elections, when some whites were panicking and felt they had to escape from the country immediately, those who are emigrating now are moving slowly and planning carefully. As Mark Davidson, the first Secretary of the Canadian High Commission, states: “Their reasons for leaving remain the same, but there is no panic involved like before the elections. Emigrants have embarked on a slow, methodical but deliberate process of making their life elsewhere.”

This exodus is of great concern to the government. President Mandela stated, “We must stop this brain drain of people leaving our country for abroad.” Speaking to a rally, attended mostly by blacks, in Port Elizabeth, he stated: “They have a role to play here. To think that you can now just push whites aside is fatal, that’s suicide.”

In 1995, speaking to an audience of 2000 people, including prominent members of the Jewish community, at Temple Emanuel, a large Reform Congregation in Houghton, Johannesburg, Mandela said: “Don’t leave, don’t let us down. You have nothing to fear from the ANC…I said this before the [1994] elections and I am repeating it today.” He spoke of how blacks had been denied the advantages of whites in education, skills and economic opportunity. But he assured whites, including Jews, that they were “marked for leadership in the new multi-party, multi-racial South Africa.” Their skills were desperately needed and they should not abandon the country in its time of rebuilding. On the platform with Mandela were Jewish African National Congress (ANC) candidates, Martin Sweet, Clive Gilberta, and Eve Jammy, as well as Chairman of the North-West branch of the ANC, Sol Cohen, and Professor Selma Browde, a veteran anti-Apartheid Jewish activist.

But Jews have, on the whole, been inward rather than outward looking. As Gerald Leissner, the previous President of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, states: “Jews tend to worry about themselves – not the broader community. That doesn’t apply to everybody and I find it very interesting now that in non-governmental organizations, government, advisors to government and consultants there are a lot of young Jews who have come out of the woodwork…”

The central Statistics Service (CSS) has recorded that emigration is up. But the CSS statistics only reveal those who declare at the airport that they are emigrating. Most emigrants do not formally emigrate – they just leave. This is because there is no advantage in officially emigrating, and it allows them to continue drawing their yearly travel allowance from otherwise blocked funds. Also, many of the emigrants are young adults who leave for a year with tentative plans to stay in London, Sydney, New York or Tel Aviv. It is only years later that they are sure that they have emigrated, rather than having lived abroad for a period before returning.

Despite this current of insecurity most South African Jews believe that there is a future for them in South Africa. There remains between 80,000 and 100,000 Jews in the country and Jewish life in Johannesburg and Cape Town remains very active. According to the 1980 census, there were 117,963 Jews in South Africa, of whom fifty-five percent lived in Johannesburg, twenty-three percent in Cape Town, five percent in Durban, three percent in Pretoria, and two percent in Port Elizabeth. Jews constituted twelve percent of all whites in Johannesburg, almost six percent of all whites in Cape Town, and much lower percentages in all the other urban centers.

In the past, Jews had settled in dozens of small towns throughout South Africa. Over the past twenty years almost all of them have migrated to the larger cities – or abroad. Few Jews remain in these towns, and dozens of small synagogues have closed or function only on high holidays. This has affected both Orthodox and Progressive congregations. Jews have not only left the small towns, they have also left and continue the leave the medium-sized cities such as Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London, Pretoria and even Durban. Therefore, not only is South African Jewry smaller than it was twenty years ago, it is also much more concentrated, with the vast majority of Jews in just two cities – Johannesburg and Cape Town.

One might expect that the ideological revolution which is now creating a radical transformation of society would have a similar liberalizing impact on Jewish beliefs and ideology, but this has not proved to be the case. Rather, the community is becoming much more fundamentalist. In Johannesburg especially there has been an increase in the number of small ultra-Orthodox minyanim, and a growing Baal Teshuvah movement is apparent.

Ohr Sameach, a Ball Teshuvah program, claims to attract close to a thousand people to its Monday-night classes in Johannesburg. Lubavitch, long anathema in this heavy Lithuanian Mitnagid Community, has grown by leaps and bounds in both Johannesburg and Cape Town. A leading Reform rabbi, Arthur Seltzer, has become a Lubavitch supporter and is now studying and teaching in Lubavitch institutions in Cape Town. Lubavitch has completed a successful fundraising campaign to renovate their entire headquarters in Cape Town.

The Orthodox Chief Rabbi stresses that: “Our Jewish community is blessed with abundant talent and, in the current situation, it is vital that we play a positive role. We must do this, not because of any dividends that may be accepted by our community, not in order to avoid antisemitism, but quite simply because it is the right thing for us to do.” He has also represented the Jewish community at national occasions. He spoke at the funeral of Chris Hanna and Joe Solve, both prominent South African Communist Party (SAC) and ANC leaders, for which some criticized him. Solve’s funeral, in particular, was a delicate issue because Solve had been born a Jew but had declared himself an atheist and was not involved in Jewish communal affairs. Despite this, Harris gave a glowing eulogy, and suggested that Solve had been a more religious Jew than observant Jews who actively or passively supported Apartheid ever were.

Critics within the Jewish community attacked Harris for his eulogy and more generally for his universalistic attitudes. Despite these and other attacks, Harris had attempted to steer South African Orthodoxy towards social justice activism, as well as religious moderation.

Reform is recorded in the Dubb Study as thirteen percent of all Jews. But a terribly destructive split in the country’s largest Progressive congregation, Imanu-Shalom in Johannesburg, has reduced the movement’s strength in that city substantially. Two British Reform rabbis, Hillel Avidan, the Chairman of the South African association of Progressive Rabbis, and Michael Standfield, are working to revive two of Johannesburg’s Progressive congregations. Another shul, the Shalom Congregation, is led by Rabbi Ady Assabi, who was the central figure in the Imanu-Shalom split. Congregation Shalom left the World Union for Progressive Judaism and has become independent, loosely affiliated with the Conservative Mesorati Movement.

This has made Cape Town’s Temple Israel, with 1,220 units, the country’s largest Progressive Congregation. Temple Israel narrowly avoided a split similar to that of Imanu-Shalom, and has maintained a high profile in Cape Town. The congregation hosted Nobel Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu at a Shabbat Peace Service and furnishes much of the budget for the South African Union for Progressive Judaism.

The shift to the religious right has been felt by the Reform community as well. The rabbi of what used to be the largest Progressive congregation in the country, Rabbi Ady Assabi of the Imanu-Shalom Congregation, broke with the Reform Movement and then loosely affiliated with the World Conservative Mesorati Movement. This precipitated an internal struggle between Assabi’s followers and those loyal to Reform Judaism. The result, after a bitter battle and a civil court case, saw the congregation dissolve and Temple Emanuel returned to the Reform Movement while Congregation Shalom remained Independent, with a loose affiliation to the Conservative Movement.

In Cape Town Temple Israel then became the largest Reform Congregation but it, too, almost underwent a religious transformation to the right under Rabbi Arthur Seltzer, a graduate of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. After a bitter struggle, Seltzer resigned and took up a Conservative pulpit in California. Recently, he was appointed as the Minister to the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation, better known as the Gardens Shul. He has now become a Lubavitch Hassid with a deep interest in Jewish mysticism, and is studying for an Orthodox smicha through Lubavitch in South Africa.

Working from within the Reform Movement, the Chairman of the South African Association of Progressive Rabbis, Hillen Avidan, has also tried to strengthen Reform Judaism by increasing its traditionalist bent. He urged that the names of the two synagogues that he served (he has since given up the smaller one and is now rabbi solely at the Sandton Reform Congregation) be Hebraized and the result is Bet David instead of Temple David in Sandton and Bet Menorah instead of Temple Menorah in Pretoria.

His reasons were that: “In the nineteenth century, Reform Jews in Germany and the USA were highly assimilationist and saw themselves as Germans or Americans of the Jewish persuasion. They eschewed the concept of a Jewish Nation and expunged from their liturgies all references to Shivat Tziyyon (returning to Zion). On both social and theological grounds they rejected the notion of rebuilding the Temple and restoring the sacrificial cult to its former central position in Jewish life.” If “The Temple” was not to be rebuilt then each local synagogue could be referred to as a “temple,” emphasizing Reform Jewish contentment with Diaspora existence and disinterest in returning to Zion. In substituting the world temple for shul or synagogue, Reform Jews of the past were stating that Berlin or Cincinnati had replaced Jerusalem in their hearts and minds.

Reform Jews of the late twentieth century still object to the reinstitution of animal sacrifices but no longer resist Jewish peoplehood or Zionism. The Shoah was a tragic reminder that Jews are regarded by others as a people – whether Jews like it or not. The establishment of Israel forced Reform Judaism to alter its stance on Zionism and, nowadays, the only serious anti-Zionists are those who belong to right-wing Orthodox Judaism.

The world temple belongs to another age and is today inappropriate. We are, therefore, pleased to have adopted more Jewish and less assimilationist names in both Sandton and Pretoria and wonder if other Reform synagogues will follow the example.

In addition, Avidan has made efforts to start a Reform day school. Avidan states that many of his congregants have children attending the Orthodox King David schools and he believes that there “is often more than a hint of anti-Reform prejudice.” Further, “King David pupils are not free to ask contentious questions of Orthodox teachers.”

In a newsletter to his congregation, Avidan wrote that “All we need to achieve a school of our own is commitment…if sufficient numbers of people are prepared to commit their energies to selling the idea and to raising the required funds we will succeed.”

Unfortunately, Avidan is probably over optimistic. The Reform congregations of South African are primarily populated by elderly adherents recruited forty years ago by Rabbi Weiler and a few others, or conversionary couples. These conversionary couples either want to fit into the existing Jewish community without drawing attention to themselves as different, and understandable goal in the conformist Jewish community of the country, or do not care enough to put in the effort to build any Judaic project, and are certainly not willing to put in the tremendous time, effort and financial resources necessary to build such a school.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that both Melbourne and Sydney in Australia have Reform Jewish schools with enrollments of four hundred to six hundred each. Since Johannesburg has a larger Jewish population than either of the Australian cities, it is not unreasonable to think that Johannesburg too could support a Reform day school. But in reality the Reform Movement is far weaker in Johannesburg than in either Melbourne or Sydney, and South African Jews are extremely shy about committing funds to anything in a country when they do not have faith that the community will maintain itself over the long term. Certainly, they are reluctant to support Jew projects of any kind in a community which is struggling just to maintain existing institutions.

In the shrinking world of South African Jewry, too frequently the leaders and members of various institutions zealously guard their territory rather than to try to consolidate into large units which could be more efficient and more productive. In Cape Town, the city bowl area has two Orthodox synagogues, the Gardens Shul and the Schoonder Street Synagogue. Both have lost hundreds of members over the past decade or so, and both are large structures which fill only a small percentage of their potential capacity on Friday nights and even few or Saturday mornings – and both struggle to find daily minyanim. The councils of the two synagogues have negotiated for years to amalgamate, but some leaders and members do not wand to risk “losing their shul.” Two struggling synagogues continue to struggle, and the most recent plan to merge was once again defeated.

Another example is the Yeoville Synagogue in Johannesburg, which burned down a few years ago. Despite the awareness that the congregation had a dim future in a rapidly changing neighborhood, the council insisted on using the insurance money to rebuild the synagogue, rather than investing it in a project which would better serve communal needs into the next century. The same course was followed by the Rondebosch Congregation in Cape Town.

The future of South African Jewry, according to Jewish organizational leader Gerald Leissner, depends on the quality of its leadership. “I see a great future for the community [in South Africa if it has]…good leadership. I see problems in the community [if it has] …poor leadership. And it could go either way.”

While some Jews are becoming Orthodox, others are assimilating. The South African affiliation rate is high compared to other English-speaking countries, and its intermarriage rate remains low. Nevertheless, increasing numbers of Jews are intermarrying. Many of them request that their partner convert. Since the Orthodox insist on a two- to three-year program and strict Halachic observance, most Jews by choice are done under progressive auspices.

Assimilation could greatly increase as a result of the new democratic and transparent society. But Leissner does not believe that this is a serious threat. There is evidence of some disaffiliation, but not to the degree that it threatens communal survival.

The new Jews by choice have the potential to influence South African Jewry, and to broaden its perspective and outlook. These conversions also serve to maintain the numerical strength of the Jewish community.

As the demographer Sergio Della Pergola stated at a symposium on Jewish demographics sponsored by the South African Jewish Boards of Deputies held at the Kaplan centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town, “the community has the resilience and the strength to go on.”

While the community will continue to shrink in size, there will continue to be a strong and vibrant Jewish community in the country in the coming years. As the country continues a social, economic and political transformation which astonishes the world, the Jews have a unique opportunity to play a major role in that process.

Former United States Ambassador to South Africa, Princeton Lyman, a congregant at my temple when he and his wife were in Cape Town, said that South African Jewry had an enormous contribution to make to the New South Africa. The question is whether enough Jews will remain in the country to make that contribution.

Controlled Panic in the New South Africa: The Impact of Social Changes on the South African Jewish Community