The Jews I pray with

מִנַּיִן לַעֲשָׂרָה שֶׁמִּתְפַּלְּלִין שֶׁשְּׁכִינָה עִמָּהֶם — שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אֱלֹהִים נִצָּב בַּעֲדַת אֵל״

From where is it derived that ten people who pray, God is with them? As it is stated: “God stands in the congregation of God,” (Psalms 82:1, as quoted in the Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 6a)

Amos Elon’s The Pity of It All is more than a history of German Jewry, it’s a tragedy in slow motion. Tracing nearly two centuries, from the Enlightenment to the eve of the Holocaust, Elon tells the story of Jews who gave their talents and loyalty to a country that would ultimately betray them.

It begins in the 18th century, with Moses Mendelssohn’s dream of fusing Jewish identity with the universal ideals of the Enlightenment. Over the decades, Jews became indispensable to German life. Brilliant minds like Heine, Mahler, Einstein, Kafka, Arendt, Adorno, and Benjamin reshaped Europe’s cultural and intellectual landscape. They saw themselves not as outsiders but as proud Germans of the Mosaic faith. Educated and refined German Jews distanced themselves from Eastern European Jews. Yiddish-speaking immigrants were poor, backwards and embarrassingly foreign. German Jews feared these newcomers would jeopardize the progress they had made. As Elon writes, they regarded Eastern Jews with “condescension and alarm.”

Zionism became a dividing line. For assimilated Jews, it felt like a rejection of everything they’d worked for. To be German, to be universal, was to transcend tribalism. Ost-Juden saw Western Jews as naïve, foolishly clinging to a nation that would never fully accept them, much less protect them.

One of the writers on the Western Jewish side, was Hannah Arendt who wrote that the Western Jews who had given up all religious and emotional ties with their own people were particularly convinced of the danger posed by the Eastern Jews, whom they regarded as the chief source of antisemitism and the greatest obstacle to their complete assimilation. She argues that the inability of German Jews to recognize Jewish solidarity contributed to their political weakness and isolation when antisemitism turned genocidal.

Growing up in South Africa, I knew nothing about this. My grandparents were Shtetl Jews from Latvia. Together with Jews from Lithuania, Jews from Baltic states make up close to 90% of where South African Jews are from.

Before 1930, Jews from Latvia and Lithuania poured into South Africa. The Quota Act closed that door. From 1930 till the 1970s, immigration ceased to be a factor in the development of the Jewish community in South Africa. It was a closed shop with very little coming from the outside to influence the people living on the inside. In the world I grew up in, there was no Internet, no TV and no idea of what was going in the rest of the Jewish world. No ideas went out or came in. We were not inheritors of German Jewish Enlightenment ideas. We thought all Jews were like us, descendants of Litvak Jews who had arrived in the 1920s. We didn’t know it, but it turns out we were a rare phenomenon, like a small insect in Baltic amber frozen from another time and the last surviving living relic of a culture that would be largely erased.

When I came to the UK from South Africa, I found a synagogue that embraced me. Although my friends were almost entirely South African like me, in synagogue, I broadened my circle. I got to know British Jews, and I was impressed with how lovely they were, so enlightened and how warm. They seemed to like me too. I loved my synagogue community, and I hoped it would be my forever spiritual home. I still do.

There was only clue about the fracture that would lie ahead. It was a mistake really. In 2012, I volunteered to write a short piece celebrating the four congregants honoured for Simchat Torah. I sent them drafts of what I wrote for their approval. One of them, meaning to send a comment to his wife, mistakenly emailed it to me.

I was shocked when I read it. I instantly deleted it. In his unfiltered description of me, he saw me as unrefined and alien. He saw me as loud, uneducated and uncivilized. It felt like he saw himself as a class above me, which I hadn’t up till then felt at all. I’m sad that I deleted his email now, because I want to look at the words he had written that shocked me so, but at least I had kept the piece that I had written about him. The answer was in the first line. His mother was German Jewish who had escaped Nazi Germany. (She was also a psychoanalyst) and I hadn’t understood what that meant because I was raised in a bubble of South African Shtetl Jewry, and he was raised in a bubble of enlightened German Jewry. His mistake was a window for me. That exchange was more than a decade ago, and we have long since reconciled. I am grateful for what I learned.

On October 7, 2023, I came to shul, shaken by the emerging news of the massacres in Israel. I was shocked and I thought everyone at shul would be feeling what I was feeling. After a few months, I learned otherwise. And since then, I’ve been trying to understand why that response isn’t universal, even within my own community.

This is what I understand so far, and it seems so obvious when I write it here. Jews are not all the same. We use the same terms, and we attribute different meanings to them. We all face Jerusalem when we pray, but we all believe and feel different things because we come from different places.

I have not assimilated into British culture. I didn’t go to Cambridge. I don’t listen to Radio 4 or read the Guardian. I am the kind of person who is moved more by singing Hatikvah than by singing German Lieder. I am a product of the Litvak bubble I grew up in, where you helped out your Lanslayt, your community, the people who come from your world. I believe in reciprocity. The giving and taking in your chosen community in a finely calibrated and often invisible system of mutual obligations that binds you together. In the whisky club on Shabbat morning, you buy whisky when it’s your turn and you don’t just take. In the world that I come from, you help your own people. You show up for them. You mourn with them. In hard times, you don’t abandon them.

I thought that rule was for Jews everywhere. But it isn’t. There is a schism in my shul today, that has been forced to the surface since October 07, 2023. As the waters of antisemitism warm up again globally, the schism becomes more visible as we all boil in it.

Once again, as in the 1930s in Germany, the schism is about Zionism. In my synagogue, there are some Jewish people who want the Israeli state to fail. There are some who want to hang posters of suffering Palestinians alongside posters of the hostages. There are some who support BDS. There are some who don’t feel the gravitational pull of Zionism. My wonderful synagogue is a broad tent.

There are some who believe Israel is the chief cause of antisemitism in the diaspora. There are some who still want to be part of the world that is entirely committed to fighting racism, sexism, global warming and poverty. There are some who believe in universalism so fervently; they have no room left for particularism. There are some believe in appeasement at any price. There are some who stand with every oppressed group, except their own, because now I understand they don’t see ‘us’ as their own. They see the upholders of German Enlightenment Liberal values as their own, which I have learned through a mistakenly sent email, does not include me.

Maybe Amos Elon was right. Maybe the pity of it all is not just historical. Maybe it’s also happening right now in front of our eyes. Our failure to find Jewish solidarity is contributing to our political weakness and isolation at a time when it is most needed. Maybe it’s the enduring tragedy of Jews who forget their own people, trying to be loved by a world that never will.

Eulogy for my father, David Stein

My dad had a big brain. He was clever in all the ways that matter, but the cleverest thing he ever did was marry our mum, his beloved Linda, and to stay married to her for 64 years. His big brain was matched by an unstoppable force of will. He was a force of nature—the kind of person they don’t make anymore. If you had the good fortune to meet him, you would remember him. He was charismatic and powerful. His big brain and sheer determination were matched only by his enormous heart.

He was so good at friendship, his beloved Mo, Mervin Berman, Dickie Levitt, Simmy Bank, Cyril Rabbs, Elliot Osrin, John Levene, the Roy’s, Dieter and Longa. Thank you to all of his friends who enriched his life

I believe part of that strength came from growing up in the slums of District Six and surviving that environment. District Six, where he was born in 1932, was unique in Cape Town because it was home to people of all colour and religions. What they all had in common was that they were all poor. It was the place newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Latvia lived. When David’s parents arrived in Cape Town, three years before he was born, they came with nothing except their determination that their children would do better than them in life, and a belief that it was education that would make that difference.

His parents had no money and no education themselves. Neither had graduated from high school and they couldn’t read or write in English. They ran a small shop which was next to the infamous Seven Steps, across the road from the old post office where they lived. Like all their Jewish neighbours, their life was straight from the shtetls of Latvia and Lithuania. District Six was a bustling neighbourhood with six bioscopes, three mikvahs (ritual baths) and many shuls. Their babies were born at the Peninsula Maternity Hospital, and their children were educated in Hope Lodge Primary.

Life was tough. There were gangs, malnutrition, and a pervasive threat of violence. It wasn’t a romantic, colourful ghetto. My father remembered seeing his father chase a thief from his shop all the way up Hanover Street. He remembered seeing a knife fight. He knew how dagga was sold, and he saw first-hand the arrangements that the gangs made with the police to avoid arrest.

Jews left District Six as soon as they could. In 1937, when David was five years old, it was the turn of the Stein family to leave District Six. They moved up to a lovely two-story house, in Gardens. It was a world away from the slums of District Six, but for the rest of his life, District Six was where David came from. Even after he left, he still went to primary school there, worked there during his summer holidays and interned there while he was at Medical School. Even when District Six was demolished, that remained his world, and those were his people.

As he would later write: ‘I was born and grew up for the early years of my life in District Six, which most of you will remember as a so-called coloured area. When was I doing my student midwifery stint at the Peninsula Maternity Hospital (in District Six) and went on district calls the patients often recognised me and said: “is jy nie n’klein Steinjie nie?” Later on, when I was doing my housemanship, fewer people recognised me and later when I was a registrar at the Peninsula Maternity Hospital nobody knew me. Either they had moved up in the world or they were in jail!’

After attending Hope Lodge (which was a hard school), then Vredehoek Primary (which was a terrible school), his parents had the resources to send him SACS that had high academic standards.

In 1945, on the 3rd of February David had his Bar Mitzvah, My father made a speech. He said: ‘Today is my bar mitzvah. From this day on, I am a man of responsibility. I am entitled to participate in the privileges and burdens of my people and may God strengthen my resolution to enable me to become a man in the best and noblest sense of the word. Unfortunately, my Bar Mitzvah celebration takes place at a time of trials and tribulation for the world at large and for my Nation particular, and I pray God that this year will bring Peace through Victory. And may during the days of all of us, Judah be saved and Israel dwell securely.

The date of his Bar Mitzvah was the third of February 1945. The war was nearly over. By that stage, his grandmother, uncle and cousins who had remained in Latvia had all been murdered in the events which did not yet have a name, and would come to be known as the Holocaust.

At SACS, my father was tall and strong, so he played rugby. Showing good hand-eye co-ordination even then, he won the school award for sharpshooting. He says was not a good student until a family tragedy in 1948 changed his approach to his education. His mother, Nina died following a termination of pregnancy which was then illegal in South Africa. His father told him he would now have to work hard, study hard, and to look after himself. And so, he did.

From 1948 to 1954, he studied medicine at the University of Cape Town. He began when he was 16. When he graduated, he interned at Groote Schuur Hospital under Jannie Louw and Chris Barnard.

After that, he went to London for four years, and he graduated as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1959. He came back to South Africa where he worked as a surgeon in Somerset Hospital. In 1964, he opened his private practice, while remaining on the Somerset hospital surgical department, ultimately becoming the Chief of Surgery there. He was extremely busy, working part-time with his hospital post and the rest of the time in his very successful private practise. He wrote many academic papers for the South African Medical Journal, as well as chapters in books. He taught generations of doctors and medical students and became Honorary Consultant Surgeon at Groote Schuur Hospital.

In 1976, he was devastated by the police response to the Soweto uprising. Like many Jews at the time in South Africa, he began to make plans to leave South Africa. He studied for the American Board and finally after three attempts, passed the exam and became a fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1978. I remember him saying that most of the things he was learning about, hadn’t been discovered when he was at medical school twenty years earlier. But in the end, he decided to stay in Cape Town, and at Somerset hospital where he was king. I remember much of my childhood in the car park of Somerset Hospital on Sunday morning before family outings, waiting for my father to finish his ward-rounds.

He did well to stay in South Africa. He was on the Somerset hospital board in 1992. He won the Distinguished Surgeon Award from the University of Cape Town. His patients adored him. His colleagues and students revered him. Even now, someone will stop me and say, ‘Your father saved my life.’ My siblings all know what I’m talking about.

One colleague described him ‘one of the last big surgeons from a golden era when surgeons were expected to know how to do everything.’ One of his former students told me at prayers that when surgery gets hard, he still thinks, ‘What would David do?’

Above all else, he valued sechel. In Yiddish, Sechel translates to common sense, intelligence, wisdom, or brains. It's a word that encapsulates not only intellectual capacity but also practical wisdom and good judgment. People sought his advice because he always knew exactly what to say—because, more often than not, he was right. He expected excellence, from himself and everyone around him, and that sometimes-brought tears. He was intolerant of what he saw as stupidity and he would lose his temper often. He was loved, feared and respected.

In 2007, he started researching and presenting his first-hand witness to the Apartheid he saw at Medical School and as a young doctor. His motivation was to document what he saw. He said: ‘I vaguely realized I should put together my thoughts on the experiences of Apartheid during my time. I soon realised I wasn’t a political historian but knew that I should nevertheless tell the story of what happened to me during this era.’

He presented his findings in a PowerPoint presentation to whomever would listen including to his peers at his Medical School reunion in 2007. The talk was entitled "Apartheid and me at Medical School". His presentation formed the basis of a magazine article published in 2018.

In his 70s, he was working as hard as ever. His surgical career had a new lease of life when he started working with a younger superstar surgeon called Charl Dreyer. After 15 years, my father was devastated when Charl died suddenly.

Aged 85, without Charl, my father needed a new career. He became an expert witness in medical negligence cases. He then worked as the Medical Assessor for the City of Cape Town, a part-time job that he held until he was 90. After that he went back to the medical negligence cases that he worked on until he died.

My father and I butted heads more than once, especially in my teenage years. He was a self-made man who had survived a childhood in District Six. I was his oldest daughter who grew up in a magnificent house in Sea Point. I took all the privileges that he had made possible, for granted. But in these past six months, we found each other again. I’m grateful we had that time—for him to see how much I loved him.

He loved all of us: his Linda, his four children, and his eight grandchildren. He taught us how to paint a wall, to love music, how to drive, how to change a tyre and how to polish our shoes. And if you never saw my parents dance together, you haven’t truly lived. Right until the end, he adored my mother. And he made sure, in every way he could, that she’d be looked after when he was gone.

He had a motto. He’d say in Yiddish, “Lozn es tsu Dovidl”- “Leave it to David.” You could always rely on him. Till the very end, we could rely on my father. We relied on him to leave us at the right time, in the right way. The boy from District Six died in his sleep aged 93. He lived well, healed thousands of people and loved us with all the power he had, till his last breath in the early hours of April 07, 2025. And here we are, trying to figure out how are going to live for the rest of our lives without him to rely on.

Golda's story

This is my grandfather's sister Golda. She's the woman on the left with the hat. She looks beautiful and chic, walking in the streets in Riga

with a two friends. The handsome man on the right with the cigarette in his hand is her husband Michel. Here she is around the time she got married to him in 1938. Even in a passport photo, she looks beautiful.

Golda was born in Skrudalin, Latvia in 1915. Her father was a tailor who made military uniforms. Her mother ran a small grocery store. She was one of eight children. Here she is between her two parents, looking boldly at the camera.

Her father died when she was about six years old, and in 1924, the widow and the five children still living at home moved to Dvinsk. A few years later, the family moved again. This time to the capital city of Riga on the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the River Daugava. The family were happy there, and with four sisters working, they were financially comfortable. In Bella’s letter she says: ‘We had enough to live on, and we made some good friends. At home it was always cheerful and pleasant. Mama was always hospitable, and we lived in a good cultural environment.’

Here they are, in 1935 with Dora on the left then Nechama in the middle and Bella on the right. Sitting in the front are Pessie on the left and Golda on the right. In 1935, three of the sisters left for Copenhagen, Moscow and Palestine. Golda and Bella were left behind in Riga with their mother. Before they all left, the family in Riga sat for a photograph, including her mother Gnesia and her brother Abram. Golda is standing behind her mother.

A year later, Golda was arrested, and jailed for for carrying communist literature. Bella writes: ‘They found her guilty, and she spent three years in a women’s jail with other female communists. I stopped studying when I was sixteen; I worked and studied in the evening to bring her food every two weeks. There were thirty women [in jail], and we all knew who was bringing what; they lived communally, and they were not forced to work. In 1938 she was freed from the prison and married a very educated, handsome, kind man, who was also a big person in the communist circles and was an engineer at a large bicycle factory. ‘

This is Golda and her husband Michael Shmushkovich in 1939. In 1940, they had a daughter whom they named Kira. In early July 1941, Hitler invaded Riga and immediately began hunting the Jewish population of Riga. In my family, those that fled survived the Holocaust. Those that didn't leave were killed, including Golda's mother, brother and his wife and almost all of their young children. I don't have much information about how Golda survived. The next piece of information I can find about Golda is this refugee card from Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1941. Name: Gol'da Shmuchkovich or Gol'da Borisovna (her father’s name was Baruch/Boris) Gender: Female Age: 27 Birth Date: 1914 Evacuation Date: 1941-1942 Evacuation Place: Riga

The translation says that she is from Riga and her pre-war occupation is listed as tailor. She was settled in the Fergana region, and it also says where she was allocated to work. On the second page are details about her daughter Kira who is then one years old. She survived the war in Tashkent with her daughter Kira, but her husband Michael was killed fighting the Nazis as part of the Latvian division of the Red Army. She never married again. Her niece Daniela thinks that Golda was sent by the Russians to a working camp in Siberia with her sister, Bella, and that's why they survived the war. I don’t know. She was probably first sent to Siberia and then to Tashkent. But she did survive and retuned to live in Riga with her daughter in 1945.

Here she is in Riga with her sisters and her daughter, Kira. After the war, they lived on Sarkanarmiyas corner of Avotu, in the courtyard. Here she is living in Riga with some of her family that survived. She’s on the right bottom row, with her nephew’s young son on her lap. Her daughter Kira is behind her on the left with the white collar.

Masha Ginzberg remembers those days and she says: ‘Every friend of my mom was my other mother. They all had only each other and their friendship was priceless.’ Here is Golda with Masha’s parents, Pesya and Isak Kopelevich, and on her other side is her nephew Boris and his wife Mina.

In the 70s, she left Riga with her daughter Kira and her granddaughter Sabina, and went to live in Israel. Here she is in Israel with her sister Pessie on the left and Bella on the right who were also living in Israel. My grandfather is there visiting from South Africa. They look very happy.

Here is my grandfather with Golda in the middle from the same time. I remember meeting Golda in Jerusalem before she died. I wish I had spent more time finding out about her life.

Rabbi Meir

This is a picture of my grandfather Simon Stein with his family in Latvia. That’s his sister Doba on the left, then his father, then my grandfather, then his mother, then the baby Bella, then the twins Nechama and Pesya. The little girl between her parents’ knees is his sister, Golda. His older brother, Avram is not in the picture and neither is his older sister, Rachel. I’m not sure why they’re not included. I only know that Rachel left home and moved to Russia where she got married. And Avram was married at 18 to a lovely woman called Tamar from a nearby Polish village. Here’s a picture of my grandfather with his father and his brother, a few years later. I don’t know when that picture was taken but it must have been before 1921, because his father died then. Three years later, my grandfather went to the army, and his mother moved with the rest of her family from Skrudalin to Dvinsk otherwise known as Daugavpils. She had a shop there and her young daughters went to school. When my grandfather came back from the Latvian army, he wanted to move to Africa with his young wife and his friends. Some of the sisters also wanted to leave Latvia. The twenties were hard years for Jews and it seemed like there were better opportunities in other countries. And this is where the story gets interesting… Not sure about what to do about her children’s wishes and her own fears about being left alone, she went to ask her Rabbi. She was fortunate that the Rabbi of Daugavpils was wise. I have a translated diary page from the youngest daughter, Bella, that describes the meeting between her mother, Gnesia Steinman and Rabbi Meir. ‘When everyone decided that they needed to look for a new happiness in their lives and leave, my mother went to a prominent rabbi. Rabbi Meir was the most respected among all the rabbis. She told him about all the desires of her children, and he told her “Dear daughter, let them go. It’s better to have children in a faraway country than nearby in the earth. I will bless them for happiness.” Mama came back from the rabbi pleased, and her children started getting ready. I want to say that the Rebbe had some knowledge of the future. He himself died from Hitler; he didn’t want to leave the city. He said: “the fate of others is mine too.” My mother died from Hitler, but we don’t know when or where. In Riga they brought many Jews from other countries, and they died there.” This is Rabbi Meir. He was the rabbi of Dvinsk/Daugavpils for 39 years. He was indeed very prominent and very wise. His thoughts formed the basis of a great book called Meshech Chochma. Apparently, he encouraged Jews to leave Europe, although he didn’t want to leave himself. He saw the writing on the wall for Jews and predicted the Holocaust. He said: "They think that Berlin is Jerusalem. From there will come the storm winds that will uproot them" But for the fact, that Bella writes that he died from Hitler, I wonder if this is the man that encouraged my Great Grandmother to encourage her children, including my grandfather to move to South Africa where my father was born, and where I was born along my brothers and sisters. All of my great grandmother’s children left one way and another and they all survived the Holocaust. Except for the one who stayed. Her oldest son, Avram was murdered along with his mother, my great grandmother, Gnesia Steinman, and his Avram’s wife and their son Eli, and their daughter’s Feigi, Bat Sheva, Bella and Pessie. His oldest son, Boris, survived. This is a picture of my great grandmother Gnesia, her son Abram and five of her daughters. This is a picture of my grandfather and grandmother and their friends, on the boat that brought them from Europe to South Africa in 1929. The boat was called the Gloucester Castle. He was 24 years old. Rabbi Meir died in 1926. If he is the Rabbi that advised my great-grandmother that it was better to have living children far away than dead in the ground nearby, I will consider myself blessed for happiness by Rabbi Meir Simchah of Dvinsk.

Seeing things

See the oldest boy on the right hand side? That’s my father’s first cousin and his name is Boruch. He’s standing with his brother and sisters, and their names are Esther, Shmuel, Pesa and I think the girl on the left hand side in the polka dot dress was called Bat Sheva.  

The children in the picture were moved to the Riga Ghetto with their parents three years after the photo was taken.

In 1941, the family were moved out of the Ghetto and taken to Rumbula Forest.  The children were shot there, along with their parents and 25,000 other Jewish children and adults.  Boruch survived because he was old enough to join the Russian Army.

I’m afraid I can’t read the details of what happened to them on the way to their deaths in Rumbula Forest because it is just too horrible. 

But maybe you can. Maybe you can explain how people can do this.  I try to understand because I think it will protect us from it happening again, but as many people as I ask, and books that I read, I still don’t understand.   I’ve heard the theory that the Nazis saw Jews as vermin; and less than human. 

But I don’t think that explains it.  Do these children look like vermin to you?  Do they look less than human?  

Do we really all see things so differently?  

In the middle is the children's grandmother, Gnesia. (She is also my father's grandmother)
The children's parents, Abram and Tamara, are on the extreme right.
They were murdered in the Shoah.
This photo was sent to me by Boruch's son, Simon Shteinman, who lives in Riga today.  

Beyond belief

Ark from Northern Italy from the 17th or 18th century, at the Jewish Museum in London 

If you’ve never been to synagogue on a Saturday morning, this is what happens:

The doors of the ark (like a cupboard) are opened and the Torah is taken out.  Then we read from the Torah.  Every week, we read a little more of the story.  This week it was about God promising Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven.   Then we lift the Torah up in the air for all to see.   After we read, the people at synagogue look at the Torah and sing: ‘this is the Torah that Moses gave to the people of Israel’.  The Torah is then paraded around the community.   Some people kiss the Torah as it goes by.  And then the high point of the morning…just before the Torah is returned to the ark, we sing ‘it is a tree of life for those that grasp it…its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace’. Then the Torah is put back in the ark.

All over the world, for thousands of years, this drama has been played out.  The doors open, the Torah is taken out.  The Torah is read and put back and then the doors are closed again.  Like revolving doors, week after week, in communities everywhere, people expect that there will be a Torah inside the ark.

But it’s a magic trick really.  Behind the scenes, there’s a world of managers and scenery-shifters that ensure that every time the doors open the Torah will be there. In truth, the Torah doesn’t stay in the ark between services. 

My sister, Lisa, is one of the people involved in ensuring this drama plays out correctly.  After the service, she takes the Torah out of the ark and carries it to a double walled, steel safe where it is locked away, protected from vandals, thieves and fire.  Before the next Shabbat, it is taken out of the safe and put back in the ark.

She said yesterday she saw a little boy had missed his chance to kiss the Torah as it went by in the procession, so she let him kiss it before she locked it away in the steel safe.  She said his eyes lit up, with the magic of the moment. 

Next week in thousands of services, in thousands of synagogues around the world, we will once again open the doors of the ark,  take out the Torah, read from it, parade it around, kiss it, then sing ‘it is a tree of life for those that grasp it’.  No doubt we will cry.   Then we will put the Torah back in the ark.  Behind the scenes, it will be taken out and put in a safe place again.

Tonight in Pittsburgh there is a Torah scroll waiting in an ark in a dark and bloody synagogue. It wasn’t read this week, but next Shabbat; it will be taken out and read.  It will be kissed and paraded and put back in the ark.

And the story will go on

Torah scroll and ark at the Jewish Museum in London 

Things you don't tell your parents

Sometimes our children do crazy things that terrify us. But it can also be your parent who does the really risky things.  My mom told me about this time when she was young.  This is her story, in her own words: 

My mother, leaning on the car, starting out on her journey with two friends

 “In 1959, I hitchhiked to Israel from Italy.   I hitched with two other South African women; all in our early twenties.  We had started off in Italy but the price to go to Israel by boat was beyond our budget, which was when we decided to hitchhike.  I knew my parents would have worried so to hide what I was doing from them, I wrote a stack of re-assuring postcards for my parents and gave them to a friend to post at regular intervals. 

We started in Rome then we went to Greece and then to Turkey and then to Syria and then to Jordan and then to Jerusalem.  We hitchhiked the whole way.  

My mom on the right, pretending she can read a map

Some places we stayed a bit longer than in other places; we stayed for three days in Aleppo, for example.  What I remember about Aleppo was that we had a picnic with an artist there. We made friends quickly, and those friends drove us to Damascus and then onto Beirut. 

We stayed in Beirut for three days. What I liked best about Beirut was a famous restaurant called Les Caves Du Roy where I sang with the band. I sang a few songs and they offered me a permanent job, but I turned it down. I had places to go.

My mom, en route, on the extreme right, having a laugh

We hiked from Beirut to Amman with Datsun trucks.  People would also ask us where we were heading. Three English girls hiking in the Middle East was very unusual. We wanted to get out of Amman. It felt unsafe and unpleasant. There was nothing to stay there for.  The questions now became more personal about where we were heading. I made up a story that we heard in Palestine that there was an airport that would take us straight back to South Africa. We said we had planned to go to Saudi Arabia but every one warned us against that because of the white slave trade.  We had every intention of going to Jerusalem. We found a guy that agreed to take us there and then we found a place to stay in the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem.  We went to see the sights. I only wanted to see the Wailing Wall.   The Wall looked like nothing special. It was just a wall and people were just going around their business in front of it. I knew I couldn’t go up and touch it or kiss it because I didn’t want people to know I was Jewish.

Mandelbaum Gate 

To get into Israel we needed to get an exit permit.  The interview at the office was a bit scary. The official asked us why we were going to occupied Palestine.  Then the Big Lie started about the airplane that went directly to South Africa. They wanted to see the money that would pay for our flight to South Africa.  I realized then that I was in trouble because I didn’t have any cash to show them that I could buy the tickets. But the other two women could.  They gave us the necessary permits and we were directed to the Mandelbaum Gate where we handed in the visas. We were very nervous. We did it very fast but I did take the time to look back. It was very emotional.  I could see the Jordanian guns pointing back towards the square towards Israel. On the Israeli side, there were no guns.  I could just see a playground and I could see children playing. I realised I was in a different place. It stopped being a game when I saw the Jordanian guns and the Israeli children on the other side.

On the other side, the Israeli security guard stamped my passport and gave me a visa for two weeks. I said no, I’m staying here.  He said: why would you want to stay here? At this point I started crying and told him I was Jewish. He whisked me off to the other interrogation room where they asked me about the route I had taken to get there. He was not friendly and very suspicious of me. I told them the truth about where I had been and he said to me if you were my daughter I would lock you up and throw away the key.   He gave me a visa for three months and said I had to report to the police every month.  The other girls went to the airport to fly back to South Africa, and I hitchhiked alone to Tel Aviv.

I had no job. I was quite lost at that time. I worked at a coffee bar, at a sheet music store. I taught English privately. I babysat. Then one day when I was babysitting, the woman told me about a physiotherapy course that sounded interesting. So I applied for that and got in.   Slowly, I started to build my life in Israel.   Years later a journalist asked me to tell my story but I refused. I felt foolish for the risks I had taken and for the lies I had told my parents.  I never told anyone the whole story of what happened until now"

My brother, me and my mom