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 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.There are some who want to hang up Israeli flags, and there are some who frown at the ones who do.My wonderful synagogue is a broad tent.

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 strongly; 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.