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Anthology forms a composite
portrait of what it meant to be
Jewish in apartheid South Africa.
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AARON LEIBEL
Washington Jewish Week
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j ewish authors — like Jewish artists, composers
and even politicians — tend to take on the col-
oration of the country in which they live.
An American Jewish author sees life differently
from one who lives in Russia, or Argentina, or Israel. And
South Africa is a world unto itself.
This is made clear in Contem porary Jewish Writing in
South Africa: An Anthology (University of Nebraska Press:
$60), a collection of short fiction edited by Claudia
Bathsheba Braude.
Jews were in an anomalous position in apartheid-ruled
South Africa, Braude writes in her introduction to the
165-page collection.
'hile Jews were classified as `white' in apartheid's white
supremacist environment that divided people into different
racial and cultural groups, for long
periods of South African history
both before and after the introduc-
tion of apartheid they were not seen
and consequently did not see them-
selves in this way," she writes.
"Jews did not automatically fit
into 'European' and 'white' social
and legal frameworks. Nor were
they completely marginalized as
`non-European,' 'colored' or 'black'
This ambivalent racial in-between-
ness produced anxieties about
Jewish racial status and belonging
within the white power base."
The joker in this equation from both sides was the
Holocaust. South Afric.a's ruling National Party had been
openly pro-Nazi in the 1930s and perceived Jews as one of
the non-white, undesirable elements in society.
After the party won the 1948 election, it apparently
decided to tone down its anti-Semitism, which, after
Auschwitz, was increasingly socially unacceptable in the
Western world.
In the wake of the Holocaust, the fearful organized
Jewish community welcomed this change, trying to gain
government approval by supporting its policies, Braude
explains. Some writers even wrote in support of apartheid.
But while the Jewish establishment supported the status
quo, individual Jews in disproportionate numbers were
active in the anti-apartheid movement.
Supporters and opponents of apartheid, writes Braude,
"were both motivated to a large extent by the common
desire to secure a society in which Jews would feel safe."
The selections in this anthology demonstrate in all
their ugly colors the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism and
racism in apartheid South Africa.
In "Evita — the Legend," Pieter-Dirk Uys writes of
Antipasto Plate, Salad or Soup and
side of Pasta with
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Reservations Always Welcome.
,
prison beating and she was dumped in her dank cell to give
birth. An ex-death row warden stood in the former "hang-
ing room" at Pretoria Central Prison and recalled leading
shackled activists to the gallows (they sang, too).
At a 1995 rally, Hirsch filmed a beaming President
Nelson Mandela dancing to a victory song before the coun-
try's first democratic elections.
Tikkun Olam
Hirsch believes he was granted the access because he was an
eager American, not a white South African; it didn't hurt
that he was Jewish.
"It's well known that most of the white anti-apartheid
activists were Jews," he said by telephone from his publi-
cist's office in Manhattan.
"These people were loved by the black community as if
they were black, as if they were one of their own."
For two years, Hirsch lived in the guest bedroom of one
such activist, Dr. Paul Davis, a "struggle doctor" who cared
for detainees when they were released from prison.
Hirsch grew to love the multicultural Shabbat dinners
Paul held with his wife, Allison Russell, a chief physician at
the largest black hospital in South Africa.
"They were a tremendous inspiration to me," Hirsch said
of the couple. "We talked a lot about tikkun dam and
what_ our responsibilities are to the world as Jews."
Ten years after Hirsch set off on that empty flight for
Johannesburg, he still considers directing socially conscious
films to be one of those responsibilities.
"I want to make movies that fuse my activism with a
larger audience," he said. O
Amandla! is scheduled to open Friday, March 21, at the
Maple Theatre in Bloomfield Township. (248) 542-0180.
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