GREAT PARK SYNAGOGUE, 1887 - 2013: A HISTORY

© Great Park Synagogue - First published 2013

Editorial Contribution:David Saks, Geoff Wald, Rose Norwich

Author: David SaksCopy Editor: Tat WolfenDesign and production: Shanil Mangaroo, Fullhouse PublishingConcept and production management: Geoff Wald

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSKevin Amoils, Bernard Berolowitz and Paul Werner, (without whom this book would never have come about.) Rabbi Shmuel Simpson, Sandy Zacharowitz, Sandy Budin, Mel Kur, Tat Wolfen, Jennie Bernstein, Mervyn First, Erica Wald, Phillip Silverman, Sheena Edwards, Rose Norwich and Isaac Reznik PUBLISHERS NOTEWhen a publication as this is produced, it is inevitable that people who played important roles in the history of the GPS will be omitted. This publication is not however, about individuals or personalities, it is a HISTORY of the shul. We have tried wherever possible to include as many personalities as possible who played leading roles in the GPS history. Obviously we could not incorporate everybody. To those who have inadvertently been omitted, I offer my apologies. Although their omission is regrettable it in no way minimises the importance of their efforts which have contributed to the growth and development over the past 100 years. - Geoff Wald

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the permission of the copyright holder.

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01 Message from Rabbi Dovid Hazdan 09

02 Preface 11

03 The pioneering years: 1887 - 1902 15

04 The road to unity 31

05 Growth and consolidation 41

06 A time for courage, a time for hope 61

07 The Rabbi Casper years 87

08 At the crossroads once more 99

09 The Currie Street interlude 115

10 A new era dawns 127

11 Gallery 143

12 Committee lists 151

Index 156

Contents89 101

111 129

133 140

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The Pioneering Years1887 - 1902

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he Great Park Synagogue being Johannesburg Jewry’s oldest congregation, it is fitting that it should be associated with two much relished pieces of South African Jewish folklore. Both relate to the establishment of the Park Synagogue in the early 1890s, and concern the redoubtable old Boer leader, President Paul Kruger.

In the first, it is said that the famously pious Kruger, on being approached by the leadership of the congregation to grant a portion of land for the building of a place of worship, sternly replied that he would only grant half what he would have given to a Christian applicant. The reason, as everyone knows, was because “Jews only follow half the Bible” (i.e. the Old Testament).

The second story relates to Kruger’s participation in the official opening of the synagogue itself, on September 15th 1892. Here, the President, who was officiating, is said to have declared, “I open this synagogue in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ”.

Did either of these incidents actually happen? As so often is the case when a historical event is examined more closely, the truth is more complex, and also rather more interesting than the legend.

The real story of Paul Kruger and the Park Synagogue will be related in its proper place. For purposes of this history, however, it is necessary to go back to the very beginning, when the original institution that would in time become the Great Park Synagogue was established.

From a Jewish point of view, Johannesburg is remarkable for being one of the only major world cities where Jews were present virtually from the beginning. As early as July 10th 1887, less than a year after the first hopeful settler pitched his tent on what was then bare veld, 88 eminent Jewish residents came together to start putting the community’s affairs on a more organised basis. At this historic meeting (it took place in the store of Mr B Wainstein, on the corner of Market and Harrison Streets) it was resolved to form the town’s first Jewish communal body. Thus was born the Witwatersrand Goldfields Jewish Association; the first important mandate of which was to form a religious congregation and build a place of worship. Its first President was the German-born Emanuel Mendelssohn, a successful entrepreneur soon to exercise considerable influence through the newspaper he would establish, the Standard and Diggers News. Hyman Morris, another German-born Jew, was elected as the Honorary Secretary. For Rosh Hashanah that same year, the congregation came together for its first religious services, held at the Rand Club (where, ironically, Jews were for a time prohibited from joining). Some 500 people attended the services, which were conducted by Reverend Joel Rabinowitz. He was then working as an assayer on the goldfields, following 23 years of serving as minister to the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation and a brief stay back in England.

If one follows the story of this pioneering body through all its various subsequent incarnations over the next century and a quarter, one eventually arrives at an institution called the Great Park Synagogue. Of all Johannesburg’s Jewish organisations today, only the Chevra Kadisha can claim an equivalent longevity (or perhaps slightly better than that, since the first Jewish burial several months earlier arguably marked its true beginnings). In other words, the history of the Great Park

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T

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

Opposite page: Interior of the President Street Synagogue, the ‘Mother Synagogue’ of the Johannesburg Jewish community and the direct ancestor of today’s Great Park congregation.

congregation is inextricably bound with the story of Johannesburg Jewry itself. The congregation might have relocated premises from time to time and undergone a number of splits and amalgamations, but its origins can unmistakeably be traced back to that inaugural 1887 gathering in Ferreirastown. Consequently, the Great Park can claim to be South Africa’s fifth-oldest still regularly functioning Jewish congregation, behind only those of Cape Town (established 1841), Port Elizabeth (1863), Durban (1882) and Oudtshoorn (1884). In addition, as will be shown, the congregation’s influence in Jewish communal life was not limited to religious affairs but branched out into the educational, welfare and political spheres as well.

The next step was to build a permanent synagogue. The original area allocated by the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek government, a double stand, was located in Plein Street, between Loveday and Rissik Streets. Most of the congregation lived elsewhere, however, so it was decided in the end to sell the plot and purchase instead two adjoining stands in President Street, between Von Brandis and Kruis Streets. (Now that so few Jews work – let alone live – in the old Johannesburg CBD, it is rather sad to think that, for the majority of the Jewish community today, these names will mean little or nothing at all. Suffice it to say, then, that these were amongst the very first streets to be laid out and named, forming part of the original kernel from which this great African city rapidly expanded).

Prior to this, in January 1888, the congregation had publicised a competition for architectural plans to be drawn for the new synagogue. This was won by two distinguished British-born architects, Arthur Henry Reid and his partner Robert Lockwell MacCowat. On November 7th that year, the foundation stone was

laid, with Mendelssohn officiating, and on September 22nd the following year, Johannesburg’s first synagogue formally opened its doors. Officially, its name was Shaar Hashamayim (Gates of Heaven), but in practice it was simply called the President Street Synagogue.

The synagogue was one of Johannesburg’s first brick buildings (at the time of its sale in 1926, it was believed to be the city’s oldest such structure). It was based on a design copied inside and out from the synagogue in Hesse Kassel in Germany. With out-to-out dimensions of 88ft by 60ft, it accommodated 500 on the ground floor and 400 in the three galleries, according to a press report of the time. Another description gave the size as 77ft by 58.6ft, with an overall seating capacity of 1500.

The President Street premises further provided the venue for Johannesburg’s first Jewish school, which, from its establishment in the mid-1890s, provided a measure of basic primary education as well as Hebrew classes for the then relatively small number of Jewish children. Its nominal principal was the congregation’s spiritual leader, the English-born Reverend Mark L Harris, although Jacob Posener, its assistant secretary, did most of the actual running and teaching. Rudimentary as this arrangement was, it was a crucial first step towards instilling in the next generation a basic level of Jewish knowledge, and in addition was especially important for the East European children who still knew only Yiddish.

The congregation was now going by the name of the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation. Reverend Harris had officiated at the opening of the synagogue, but the honour of being Johannesburg Jewry’s first spiritual leader must go to

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Opposite page: Counter-clockwise: Interior view of the President Street Synagogue, after renovations; one of the few surviving images showing the exterior of the President Street Synagogue; Reverend Joel Rabinowitz, who officiated at Johannesburg’s first formal Jewish religious services in 1887 and again the following year. Reverend Mark Harris, Johannesburg’s first full-time

congregational rabbi, was appointed as spiritual leader to the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation in 1888.

Reverend Joel Rabinowitz. It was he who had officiated at the first High Holiday services in 1887 and again the following year. For a time, he was considered for a permanent position, but ultimately his candidature gained insufficient support within the congregation.

Within two years of the opening of the President Street Synagogue, the congregation had split twice. The first schism occurred in 1890, and was largely for cultural and ideological reasons. To explain how it came about, some background on the socio-cultural diversity of the congregation at the time is necessary. While the great influx of Eastern European immigrants (largely from Lithuania) was already well underway by the end of the 1890s, the Anglo-German element in the Jewish population was proportionately still quite significant. What was more, Jews of English and German origin initially enjoyed a significant edge over their East European cousins, in that they tended to be wealthier, better educated in secular disciplines and longer settled in the country. They were also a great deal more socially acceptable to their gentile neighbours, who viewed the largely impecunious, rough-mannered Yiddish-speaking newcomers as a particularly unwanted alien influence. The more assimilated Anglo-German Jews often looked down on the “Peruvians”, a disparaging and now antiquated term for East European Jews that may have derived from the term ‘Polish Russian Union’ or possibly from ‘Peruvnik’ (Yiddish for ‘Parvenu”). However, such social prejudices never got in the way of extending much-needed charitable assistance when required, as it often was in the difficult early years. Taken as a whole, the Anglo-German Jews proved themselves to be remarkably philanthropic towards their co-religionists, no matter how lukewarm their actual commitment to Jewish religious practice might have been.

It was, in fact, the distinctly lower levels of Jewish religious knowledge and observance amongst the Anglo-German Jews that saw the Litvaks regard them, in turn, with some disdain. They, after all, had come from the leading European centres of Jewish piety and scholarship, even if their own actual connection to that tradition had inevitably been greatly attenuated, in an environment so lacking in even rudimentary Jewish infrastructures. It was therefore very difficult for them to relate to the reserve and decorum of the Anglo-German mode of worship, as well as to the wide-spread non-practice and ignorance of basic Halacha. For some, indeed, it was more than difficult, and it was these disenchanted members that led the first breakaway from the mother congregation in 1890. This became the Fox Street Beth Hamedrash, colloquially known as the Griene (‘Greenhorns’) shul. Its higher levels of religiosity and learning, combined with the far more modest premises in which it initially operated, make this Johannesburg Jewry’s first Orthodox shtiebl. At its height, it was based in handsome premises in Doornfontein, and its Rav was also the Rosh Beth Din.

The next split in the WHC congregation would be of greater significance: It was the breakaway group that went on to take the relevant steps that would culminate, some two decades later, in the establishment of the United Hebrew Congregation, with its Chief Rabbi and majestic synagogue in Wolmarans Street. The schism itself fortunately proved to be of a temporary nature, even though 23 years were to pass before the rival congregations would reunite.

Whereas the main reason behind the previous split in the congregation had been ideological, the breakaway that took place a year later was more about personalities.

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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.

Opposite page: The executive committee and the old and new synagogue buildings of the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation, 1915.