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14 Tishrei 5765 - September 29, 2004 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Flurry of Anniversaries in Jewish Africa
by D. Saks

During the secular year 2004, a number of Jewish organizations and communities on the African continent are celebrating important anniversaries. These include the marking of three centenaries, namely those of the Nairobi Hebrew Congregation in Kenya, the Cape Council of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the Claremont Hebrew Congregation, also in Cape Town. Even older is the Oudtshoorn Hebrew Congregation, which is preparing to celebrate its 120th birthday in style, while the Windhoek Hebrew Congregation in Namibia turns 80.

Organized Jewish life south of the Sahara is of comparatively recent origin, which lends added significance to the reaching of these milestones. The 300-strong Jewish community in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, despite losing many members since Kenya attained independence in the early 1960s, remains the most viable sub-Saharan Jewish community outside of South Africa and troubled Zimbabwe.

Kenya played other roles in modern Jewish history. It was actually in the western part of that country, and not modern- day Uganda, that the early Zionist leadership briefly considered establishing a Jewish homeland. Following World War II, the British interned Zionist activists in detention camps in Kenya. A number of these were liberated and whisked across the border into the Belgian Congo in a daring rescue operation carried out by South African Jews.

Kenya also featured in the Entebbe raid of 1976. Israeli airplanes were allowed to refuel at Nairobi airport, and Israeli hospital planes were stationed on the tarmac to attend to those injured in the raid. In 1982, terrorists bombed a Kenyan hotel whose owner had hosted some of the Israeli raiders at the time.

It was unfortunately not the last time Kenya was the object of a major terrorist attack. In 1998, over 200 were killed in an Al Qaeda bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, and in 2002, twelve people, including three Israelis, lost their lives in the suicide car bombing of the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa. The carnage could have been much greater. The terrorists, who were also found to be linked to Al Qaeda, also tried, and narrowly failed, to bring down an Israeli passenger jet soon after takeoff.

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In Cape Town, the celebration of the centenary of the Cape Council of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) formed the second part of the SAJBD's centenary celebrations. The first took place last year, with the marking of the centenary of the Board in the northern provinces of the Transvaal (today Gauteng) and Natal. The conference itself was marred by some controversy, with two of the speakers straying from the subject on which they were supposed to speak, and instead respectively attacking Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians and attacking the mainstream Orthodox community for its refusal to recognize Reform converts as Jews.

The opening of the Cape conference was addressed by Ebrahaim Rasool, Premier of the Western Cape Province. Rasool had been criticized by the Jewish community for his overtly anti- Zionist statements and for his participation at protest rallies where Jews were overtly denigrated. He called for moderates of all sides to find common ground and sideline extremists and also acknowledged that there was a problem of antisemitism in the 400,000-strong Muslim community in Cape Town.

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The 120th anniversary of Oudtshoorn will be marked by a three- day series of commemorative events in November. The sleepy southern Cape Town, located in the arid, if picturesque, part of the country known as the Karoo, was once known as the Jerusalem of South Africa because of the size and vibrancy of its Jewish community. At its height during the 1880-1914 period, when Oudtshoorn was benefiting from an international ostrich feather boom, there were over 3,000 Jews living there. The community shrunk rapidly following the collapse of the ostrich feather industry, but an active core remained. Today, the Oudtshoorn Jewish community consists of only 18 families, but it continues to be active, holding regular shul services, maintaining a high level of kashrus and ensuring that its institutions, including its historic synagogue and Jewish cemetery, are kept in excellent condition.

 

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