The Sentinel, v.075 no. 09, 1929

              7
JEWISH CULTURE IN SOUTH AFRICA
By JOSEPH BRAININ
In that far-off territory of South Africa,
whose very name sounds so strange in the
ears of Americans, is a rather large Jew-ish
population spread out in the cities and
on the veldt. In this article Mr. Joseph
Brainin, one of the editors of the Seven
Arts Feature Syndicate, who has spent
several months in South Africa, gives a
vivid, graphic description of the culture
of the Jews in South Africa and depicts
the amazing phenomenon by which the
Jewish women have acquired culture
while the men have remained stagnant.
Mr. Brainin's study is an interesting con-tribution
to a knowledge of contemporary
Jewry.-The Editor.
Until a few years ago African Jewry was a
mystery to world Jewry. The word "Afri-can"
added an exotic flavor, even a mystic
stamp. One was inclined to imagine lean,
brown faces with daring aquiline noses, svelte
muscular bodies draped in colorful garbs.
Once one is in South Africa all the pic-turesque
notions fade away. One discovers
that the African Jew is a debonair Litvak
who missed the steamer for New York a
quarter of a century ago and embarked for
Cape Town. The sunny open spaces, the wild
game, the jungles did not tempt him to shed
his business suit for a hunting outfit. Nor
did he exchange his embonpoint for a rifle.
He was attracted by the gold and diamond
mines and most of all by the trade of sup-plying
merchandise to the huge black popu-lation.
The African Jew became the shop-keeper
par excellence.
Incidentally he became the civilizer of these
natives. A much more powerful influence
than the missionary. His zeal was sponsored.
by his own interests: The more civilization
the more sales. The Litvak merchant taught
the naked Kaffir to keep himself warm, very
warm, with blankets; to get a liking for ele-mentary
furniture; the women he converted
to the shawl as headgear; he convinced them
that daylight should be prolonged by candles;
he even instilled a sense of family life into
the Kaffir. When the male Kaffir leaves his
family in his native kraal (village) on a con-tract
for one or more years to work in a mine
or on a farm, and thus enters the domain of
the Litvak shopkeeper, he is made to realize
that gold in itself is of no value. It is the
merchandise that counts, the various goods
that make life more comfortable. And so the
first purchase of the Kaffir is a big case in
which he stores, during his working period,
all kinds of useful and ornamental goods to
take home. When his contract is up he wan-ders
back to his kraal, penniless, dragging a
heavy case crammed with the wonders of the
Lilvak civilization. One could ponder end-lessly
on the strange Litvak influence on the
Kaffir-but I leave this to some German pro-fessor
who loves research work. However, I
claim for myself the discovery of Litvak civili-zatory
influence on the colored native.
It must also be mentioned that the pres-ence
of seven million natives in a country
of not quite two million white men is exert-ing
a profound influence on the development
of Jewish family life. The Jew automatically
becomes a sovereign; he feels that he is being
looked up to by somebody. Physical work-called
"Kaffir-work" here-all that which in
Eastern Europe tended to make him the under-dog
has disappeared here. The poorest family
has one or two colored servants; their wages
range from five to seven and a half dollars a
month. Thus the woman becomes a free be-ing.
Her chance for intellectual development
are unhampered. She, the Litvak daughter, be-comes-
as though touched by a magic wand-an
English lady. (Of course, I merely indi-cate
this interesting metamorphosis in the
African Jewess; a detailed analysis would
bring out most convincing details.) It is due
to this Kaffir "influence" that the African
Jewish woman is undoubtedly the only cul-tural
value African Jewry has thus far pro-duced.
One of the results of the reciprocal Jewish
and Kaffir influence in South Africa is Sarah
Gertrude Millin, the foremost African author-ess.
This being merely a causerie and pencil
notes from the diary of a traveling journalist,
I may be permitted to pause and relate my
impression of the African Fannie Hurst. We
had a chat on a sunny afternoon on the lawn
of her charming, soothing little home in
Johannesburg. Gertrude Millin is a young
woman, married to a distinguished looking and
highly successful barrister. There are no
children. The author of "God's Step-Chil-dren"
is a vivacious, witty, keen conversa-tionalist.
America interests her. She is
negotiating for a lecture tour in the United
States. "I'd like to see with my own eyes
the land of Whitman, prohibition, Upton Sin-clair,
Governor Fuller, Aimee MacPherson,
Sinclair Lewis and Ludwig Lewisohn. Con-trasts
always attract me. And Jewish Amer-ica
must be a seething kettle I'd like to dip
my fingers in," she confides, and there is some-thing
utterly unaffected, young, vital in her
smile. The next minute she sits mute and
stern, lost in thought.
This young African Jewess knows concen-tration.
Her books have not been playful hob-bies.
They have been wrested from her in-nermost
soul, their easy fluency notwithstand-ing.
After my contact with Africa I like her
"An Artist in the Family" best. Gertrude
Millin, however, swears -that her best work is "The South Africans," a book very little
known in America. She has just finished an-otlier
volume, a book of essays under the title
"I Venture to Say . . ." Sarah Gertrude
Millin, with her feminine intuition, her keen
observation inspired by a strong artistic imag-ination,
has visualized more clearly than any
one else the tragic struggle of white against
black in Africa. She is one of the beginnings
of a South African culture.
South Africa also has Irma Stern, a Jewish
woman whose fame has spread all over Europe
as the most forceful and original painter of
African life. Strange as it may seem, Irma
Stern, just like Gertrude Millin, is less famous
in her own country than overseas. Irma
Stern's canvases and drawings have been ex-hibited
all over Europe: in Berlin, Paris, Brus-sels,
Vienna, Frankfort, Leipzig, and Chem-nitz.
In South Africa her modern conceptions
are ridiculed. In Bordeaux-where a friend
of hers, without her knowledge, sent a few
of her drawings-she received the gold medal.
Germany publishes albums of her paintings
and drawings; books have been written about
this young (she is still under thirty) South
African artist, thoroughly modern yet tech-nically
mature, who depicts in blazing colors
and strong charcoals the "peculiar animal-like
beauty" of the native physique.
Irma Stern sees the native as a simple, al-most
child-like, candid being. The subject of
her work, regardless of her execution, is fas-cinatingly
original. She has penetrated the
soul of the native, and therefore knows his
physique and face very well. A good friend
of Miss Stern, a talented Jewish journalist (a
woman, of course), told me: "This sincerity,
this intuitive truthfulness in Irma's work has
not been achieved by intuition alone. She has
attained this understanding by making count-less
studies of native life. She goes on lengthy
expeditions into the Transvaal, Natal, Portu-guese
East Africa, the Tranksu, Swaziland,
and other native reserves. She gladly faces
discomforts to come face to face with the real
native, uncontaminated by contact with civ-ilization.
Irma Stern is one of the phenomena
that the free woman of South Africa has pro-duced."
In Johannesburg, the metropolis of South
Africa, there are three woman advocates. A
university professor pointed out this fact as a
symptom of South African civilization. He
forgot, naturally, to mention that the three
are Jewesses, to wit, Mrs. M. Geffen, Mrs.
Bertha Solomon and Miss Rose Makepeace
Franks; the last name stands for an exception-ally
brilliant debater not twenty-three years
old.
One could enumerate more striking illustra-tions
which would confirm my views on the
Jewish womanhood of South Africa. In the
journalistic field and even in commercial
spheres one meets the South African Jewess,
unaffected by the geographic isolation of Af-rica,
well informed, well read and modern in
her every thought. It is, of course, in the social
domain that the Jewish woman of South Africa
has surpassed her sisters of other countries.
This is, as I indicated at the outset, due in
great part to the Kaffirs, who provide the for-mer
Yiddishe balaboste with an army of
servants and thus gradually transform her into
an English hostess. While of course the great
majority of these hostesses spend their fore-noons
with tennis, their afternoons with bridge
and their evenings in the movies, there is a
goodly number--a splendid percentage-that
reads and thinks.
I spent one evening in the home of two
great-nieces of the famous Libau Cantor Ras-sofsky.
His fine, patriarchal face adorns the
wall of the drawing room. The two nieces,
South African born and bred, would puzzle the
most expert anthropologists. He would feel
tempted to select them as illustrations of the
true Nordic type in both features and build.
We discussed American literature. They had
read everything. They had actually studied
Upton Sinclair (who is the most widely read
author in South Africa, especially among the
Jews), and their knowledge of the Sacco-
Vanzetti case, their familiarity with the Amer-ican
Negro folklore, astounded me. Several
Jewish young men were present, yet entirely
absent from the conversation.
This family scene represented a true picture
of South African Jewry. The woman the in-tellectual
character, the man the materialistic
slave. The younger generation, a result of
existing social and economic conditions, re-flects
the future, in which the Jewish woman
will play a considerable role in the arts, and
in politics when she will be permitted to enter
that field.
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