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NEWS
Zimbabwe Jewry In Survival Mode As Country Disintegrates
by D. Saks, South Africa

Zimbabwe's small and aging Jewish community is finding it increasingly difficult to keep its institutions afloat as the mounting economic and political crisis in the country hits ever closer to home.

Zimbabwe, a large, landlocked republic on South Africa's northern border which once boasted one of Africa's most successful economies, has gone the way of other Southern African states in recent years. The ZANU-PF regime of Robert Mugabe, which has ruled the country since it attained independence in 1980, has implemented ever more reckless measures to maintain its power. Amongst other things, it has forcibly seized white-owned farm land for "redistribution" to its supporters, with the result that farm production has plummeted and Zimbabwe, once a food exporter, now faces mass starvation.

South African Jewish leaders, who visited Zimbabwe last week to take part in the biennial Zimbabwe Board of Deputies and Central African Zionist Federation conferences in the capital, Harare, and otherwise lend assistance to the community, painted a bleak picture of the situation in the embattled country. Michael Mensky, who represented the Jewish Agency in South Africa, commented that at one, empty, petrol station, he counted over 600 cars queued up waiting for petrol to arrive, even though when, or even if, it ever would come was not known.

Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, Spiritual Leader to the African Jewish Congress countries, pointed out the disastrous shortage of both bread and milk, the shortage of milk being attributable to the fact that so many dairy cows were being slaughtered for meat. On the black market, a South African Rand cost Z$130 (Zimbabwe dollars) when he arrived on the Monday; a few days later, the rate was Z$190, or roughly Z$1900 to one US dollar. Although comparatively wealthy by local standards, the Jewish community is finding itself in a situation where even though it has the buying power, there is increasingly nothing to buy.

At its height in the mid-1960s, the Zimbabwe Jewish community comprised over 9000 souls and was Sub-Saharan Africa's only substantial Jewish presence after South Africa. Today, only between 650 and 700 remain, almost all located in Harare (345) and Bulawayo (225). The average age is over sixty, with only four weddings having taken place in the last decade. Age is a major reason why many Jewish Zimbabweans have chosen to remain and try to sit out the crisis, although others are effectively prisoners to their funds, which they would be unable to take with them were they to emigrate.

Despite the mounting crisis, the community continues to keep its institutions running. There are two synagogues in Harare, the Harare Hebrew Congregation (where Mincha-Maariv takes place daily) and the Sephardi Congregation of Harare, and one in Bulawayo and a well-maintained Jewish aged home.

The two main urban centers each even have a "Jewish" day school, Sharon School in Harare and Carmel in Bulawayo, where kashrus is maintained, Hebrew is compulsory and all the yomim tovim observed. However, at both schools Jewish pupils are today a small minority. At Sharon, there are 30 (out of a total of 186) and at Carmel only 11 out of 146. Much of the work of the Zimbabwe Board of Deputies has involved restoring the Jewish cemeteries in the other urban centers and country districts, where there has long ceased to be a Jewish presence.

 

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