The paradox of a highly organized, thriving South African Jewish community threatened with potential decline because of the complacency of its members and a lack of young leadership willing to devote themselves to specifically Jewish affairs, was stressed here today by Leon Feldberg, editor of the Southern African Jewish Times, who is currently visiting this country.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Mr. Feldberg said that, in spite of their location in a part of the world subject to periodic waves of tension, South African Jews “are becoming indifferent to matters specifically Jewish, simply because they do not have the problems that plagued world Jewry in earlier generations.”
Currently numbering about 110,000, the South African Jewish community is among the best organized in the world in the fields of education, congregational activity, Zionist affairs and welfare programs. Mr. Feldberg said, adding that communal harmony was generally the rule among a Jewry largely of traditional learning with only a moderate Reform movement.
He cited as another difficulty to the thriving community the fact that a high level of Jewish education had created widespread demand for improvement far beyond their present resources. The community supports an elaborate Hebrew education network with the largest center of Jewish population in Johannesburg, providing some form of Hebrew education to 8,000 youngsters out of a total population of 55,000. Although currently training their own Hebrew teachers, religious leaders are largely brought in from abroad.
During his visit here, Mr. Feldberg presented to South Africa’s Ambassador in Washington, H.L.T. Taswell, a copy of “South African Jewry, 1965,” The volume, the first biographical work on South African Jewry published in nearly four decades, was edited by Mr. Feldberg.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
