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NEWS
Zimbabwe Jewry: Courage in Adversity
by D. Saks
Barring a dramatic turnaround in the country's fortunes,
organized Jewish life in Zimbabwe seems destined to fade away
altogether within the next few years. Aging, increasingly
impoverished and steadily shrinking through emigration and
natural attrition, the Jewish community in the crisis-ridden
Southern African country has dropped below the 400 mark, with
further losses expected in both the short and long term. Even
as the Jewish community embarks on what looks like being its
last lap, however, its remaining members continue to keep the
communal wheels turning, against the odds.
The resilience of Zimbabwe Jewry is in many ways symbolized
by its oldest member, Laizer Abrahamson. Today 105 years old
and having lived through the entire 20th century, Lithuanian-
born Mr. Abrahamson has spent most of his life in Zimbabwe
and continues to read the maftir every Shabbos for the
Bulawayo congregation. Late last year, together with his
distraught fellow congregants, he was a helpless witness to
the destruction of his beloved shul in a freak fire on
Shabbos Shuva.
The dwindling Bulawayo community, established in 1894, today
holds weekday services at Savyon Lodge, the Jewish aged home,
and Shabbos and Yom Tov services in the Sinai Hall, once the
home, ironically, of the city's long-defunct Reform Jewish
congregation. Although considerably smaller than Harare, the
community still has a full-time rabbi, Rabbi Nathan Asmoucha.
In Harare, the capital, the Sephardi and Ashkenazi
congregations today hold joint Shabbos services, alternating
between the two shuls.
One way in which the Jewish leadership is ensuring that the
legacy of their community is protected, even as the remaining
Jews gradually depart, is by restoring the various Jewish
cemeteries around the country. Virtually all Zimbabwe Jews
today live in the main urban centers of Harare and Bulawayo,
but at one time many of the smaller towns also boasted Jewish
communities.
In the late 1990s, the Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies
embarked on a comprehensive restoration project to upgrade
the cemeteries in these areas. This culminated in mid-June
this year in a rededication service for Kwekwe, the last of
the country cemeteries to have been successfully restored.
The project was brought to fruition in the face of
considerable difficulties, amongst other things having to
obtain quotations at a time when prices were escalating on a
daily basis and lengthy delays caused by cement and fuel
shortages.
The Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies continues to look after
the community's interests in other ways, such as monitoring
and responding to antisemitism, organizing the annual Yom
Hashoah ceremony, allocating educational scholarships from
trust funds and representing the community on such bodies as
the African Jewish Congress and Commonwealth Jewish Council.
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, Spiritual Leader to the African
Jewish Congress, makes regular pastoral visits
Officially, there is still a Jewish day school in Zimbabwe:
Sharon School in Harare. In reality, of the school's 200
pupils, only twenty are considered Jewish by the school and
only about 10 have a Jewish mother. The twenty pupils are
taught Hebrew three times a week and the headmistress, who is
not Jewish, teaches Judaism, festivals and leads the "Shabbat
ceremony" every Friday for the entire pupil body.
Surreal inflation figures (6-700 percent) have caused havoc
throughout Zimbabwe's embattled society, and the remaining
Jewish communal institutions were similarly affected. A
funeral under the Chevra Kadisha, for example, now costs ZIM$
4,000,000 while school fees at Sharon School are ZIM$
25,000,000 per term. The average monthly salary in Zimbabwe
is only ZIM$ 150,000.
Rabbi Silberhaft, who visited the country in June, noted
various other manifestations of a totalitarian society in
deep crisis. Farms that once produced an abundance of
alfalfa, corn, cotton and cattle are now abandoned and
overrun with tall weeds. So regular are the power cuts that
it has given rise to the mordant joke: "What was used in
Zimbabwe before candles? Electricity."
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