Abstract
Diasporic institutions and organisations are inevitable, not only as representatives of the diaspora community in a host society, but more fundamentally to collectivise „diasporized“ individuals (Boyarin/Boyarin 1993) and reproduce a diaspora community as collective belonging,. Sökefeld and Schwalgin emphasise the importance of institutions for the distribution, production and reproduction of diasporic consciousness and imaginations. To them, the stable structures of diasporic institutions stay under-theorised where “mobility and non-localisation” of diaspora communities are emphasised (ibid.).
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Notes
- 1.
I use the term institutions according to the definition by Richard Scott: “Institutions are comprised of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements, that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life” (Scott 2008: 48). Challenging definitions stressing the constraining, controlling and restricting character of institutions, Scott ads: “it is essential to recognize that institutions also support and empower activities and actors” (Scott 2008: 50).
- 2.
With organisation I specifically refer to a formal entity which comprises of multiple individuals with a particular purpose. Institutions and associations are examples of organisations.
- 3.
Organised by Herzl in 1897, at the first Zionist Congress the Basle Declaration was written establishing the Zionist movement’s goal to “secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognised, legally secured home in Palestine”, to unify world Jewry, strengthen “Jewish national consciousness, and international political negotiations” (Laqueur 1972: 106).
- 4.
The non-socialist Bnei Zion movement merged in 1961 with Habonim Dror (Shimoni 2003: 117).
- 5.
The term movement is colloquially used to refer to either the entirety of all Zionist youth organisations or to a specific Zionist youth organisation. In some cases, I will therefore use movement and organisation interchangeably.
- 6.
Politically most of them are affiliated to one of the Israeli political parties.
- 7.
The Hebrew word chanichim (= camper) refers to the members of Zionist youth movements, who also go on their organisations’ summer camps as guides for the younger participants.
- 8.
Although Kaplan (2006) lists Betar as one of the Zionist movements in South Africa, according to Wikipedia Betar South Africa has currently shut down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betar#South_Africa).
- 9.
Netzer’s parent bodies are the SAZF, but also South African Union for Progressive Judaism (SAUPJ). The SAUPJ is not a beneficiary of the UJC, as the Union of Orthodox Synagogues is, but the temple Israel education receives funds from the UJC.
- 10.
In the 198o’s the UDF was an important legal non-parliamentary opposition alliance.
- 11.
Peter Novick finds more cynical words to describe the educational program, which has been conducted since 1988: “Can you appreciate Israel if you haven’t seen Auschwitz?’ This was the headline of a Jewish newspaper’s report on the March of the Living, in which thousands of Jewish adolescents tour death camps in Poland, where they commemorate Yom Hashoah, then are flown to Israel, where they celebrate Independence Day. American teenagers join Jewish youths from around the world in a meticulously orchestrated ‘Holocaust to Redemption’ pageant in which the Zionist message is driven home” (Novick 2000: 160).
- 12.
Birthright, or Taglit trips, meaning discover in Hebrew, are carried out by Israeli NPOs. Their Jewish participants from the diaspora communities are between 18 and 32 and usually on their first visit to Israel.
- 13.
Other examples are the Hungarian program „reconnect Hungary“ (http://reconnecthungary.org/), offering educational trips for young adults with Hungarian roots in Canada and the USA since 2012, or the “Birthright Greece Initiative” (https://www.hellenext.org/birthright-greece-initiative/), sending youth from USA and Canada to Greece since 2007, or the „Activities and Study Programm for Overseas Youth“ for young Taiwanese in China since 1989 (http://www.ocac.gov.tw/OCAC/Eng/Pages/VDetail.aspx?nodeid=1811&pid=13994), or the Armenian version, Birthright Armenia (http://www.birthrightarmenia.org).
- 14.
Eliot Osrin died in 2017 at the age of 84 in Cape Town.
- 15.
Unfortunately, Eliot could not provide me with numbers on how many subscriptions are voluntary paid for. This would have been an interesting indicator of how widespread monetary support is among the community members.
- 16.
I tried to follow up on the Generation Next initiative, but I could not find out about any further activities after the event. Head of this department, Maya, moved to Canada in 2018.
- 17.
This suits Edna Bonachich’s (1972, 1973) and Janet Tai Landa’s (2016) findings that mutual trust among members of the same middlemen minority reduced transaction costs and therefore were an asset to their economic success.
- 18.
Later, I visited this organisation and that is how most of the staff was presented to me.
- 19.
The area of the old-aged home and the Jewish day school is by no means an exclusively Jewish suburb. In the same road a mosque and the catholic private school and can be found.
- 20.
Johannesburg’s equivalent day school, the Kind David school is even mentioned as largest Jewish day school in the world (Wikipedia.org: Jewish day school).
- 21.
The director of the Holocaust Centre estimates the events at the Holocaust Centre to be “generally attended by a group which is … aging and which is involved in learning and which is largely Jewish” (Freedman 2015). After attending numerous events of the Holocaust Centre since my internship in 2011 I share the director’s evaluation.
- 22.
In opposition to Mendel’s assessment Jonathan and Maya from the Cape SAJBD in our interview almost 10 years later, argued that the share of “Jewish education” in the Herzlia curriculum was in decline.
- 23.
A Xhosa educator at a Jewish organisation continued to live in a township, as she told me, so that she was able to save the money to send one of her kids to a private school in town. To her the education at a “good school” was the only way out of the township, which she had not been able to achieve. Linda, the director of an educational NGO, recalls which trouble poor parents of black children took to afford school fees at a formerly white school: “There were parents who would arrive with a brown paper bag, filled with cash, pay their fees like that. […] they were pedlars, they had a stand on the parade, selling vegetables whatever. And they wanted their children to have a good education”. These examples are meant to demonstrate the importance of good education for not only Jewish and white parents in South Africa.
- 24.
Although there are cases of non-Jewish and/or non-white students attending Herzlia schools “preference for admission is given to children of parents where one or both of the parents are either Orthodox or Progressive Jews” (Herzlia.com).
- 25.
In their religious practice the Sephardic community can be categorised as traditional, just as its Ashkenazic counterpart, even though both are affiliated to the Union of Orthodox Synagogues (Mendelsohn/Shain 2008: 182).
- 26.
This category included some synagogues in other countries, which were recipients of donations, but most seldom visited and some egos mentioned multiple synagogues.
- 27.
The Sephardic synagogue, also commonly termed Kehlila, was named after the only remaining Synagogue on Rhodes (Mendelsohn/Shain 2008: 183)
- 28.
In the Ba’al Teshuva movement, returnees usually become religiously observant in an orthodox fashion.
- 29.
A Yeshiva is a Jewish traditional educational institution.
- 30.
Samuel wore a tallit (prayer shawl) and a Yamulke (skull cap) and would not greet by handshake as signs of his religious piety.
- 31.
I refer to the classical rabbinic period, which is the foundational period of Judaism in approximately the first seven centuries CE. „The main literary products of the Rabbis or Sages, as the rabbinic authorities from that period are called, are the Mishnah (third cent. CE), and the Jerusalemite (fourth–fifth cent. CE) and Babylonian (sixth cent. CE) Talmuds“ (Teugels 2016: 235).
- 32.
In Talmudic times, the gabbai (Berger 2007), as appointed middlemen, were the ones in charge of the distribution of alms, a capacity that came with power. Having control over alms, redistribution enabled Jewish and Christian clergy to direct funds to the rabbinic movement, or the church itself, before handing it out to the recipients (Gardener 2015: 37).
- 33.
With the invention of tradition, I refer to the concept of Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), where in my case of giving, invention does not necessarily mean that the acts of giving have not actually taken place. Far more the term invention emphasises that a certain narrative is constructed and perpetuated. Furthermore, it is questionable whether a clear distinction between invention and authenticity can be made at all, as all symbolic phenomena are invented (Handler 1984).
- 34.
A minyan, a minimum of ten Jewish adults, is acquired for a public prayer, for example.
- 35.
This depiction goes a long with a few unproven assumptions: The first one is that a Jewish individual could only be in a township for charity reasons. Secondly, all Jews (involved in township outreach) pray. Also, in the orthodox tradition only men count for the quorum, which would leave Jewish women out of the equation.
- 36.
Mendelsohn/Shain und Shimoni give further details on the projects of the Women’s Sisterhood, which are connected to the Progressive Jewish community Johannesburg and its Rabbi Weiler (Mendelsohn/Shain 2014: 148, Shimoni 2003: 259). The Women’s Sisterhood remains active today with charitable giving addressing both the Jewish community and wider society (JPPI 2014: 180 f.).
- 37.
E-Mail correspondence with Leaza, chairperson of the UJW in Cape Town.
- 38.
Bruk counts 60 countries from where ORT operates (Bruk 2006: 219).
- 39.
For Linda the reason for the lack in teaching skills at schools is the current educational minister who does not “acknowledge what the issues are”. She is angry about South Africa being in the bottom ten of different international testing which “for a country, which is as developed as this country is, it’s … ridiculous”.
- 40.
In our interview Eliot Osrin mentioned Afrika Tikkun repeatedly as beneficiary and so did the organigram state the organisation as recipient of funds. The updated and redesigned organigram from 2018 does not list Afrika Tikkun as a beneficiary and neither does their homepage. I could not verify if just the visualisation changed, or the organisation no longer receives funds from the UJC. In their 2018 review, the Cape Board of Deputies lists Afrika Tikkun as a cooperating organisation (https://www.capesajbd.org/chairmans-report/)
- 41.
According to the Jewish Chronicle from 2009 “Friends of Ikamva Labantu have been established all over the world, including the United States, the UK, Germany, France, Australia and Holland.
- 42.
Her speech is available on: http://tedxeuston.blogspot.com/2012/04/helen-lieberman-tedxeuston-2011.html
- 43.
Carole Eglash-Kosoff, who herself worked with Helen Lieberman, published interviews with Helen Lieberman on her work with Ikamva Labantu.
- 44.
Marlene Silbert told me while we were walking through Company’s Garden, how she lobbied for the history of the Holocaust to be mandated as part of the national curriculum at the Department of Basic Education.
- 45.
The claims conference receives material compensation from the German government in the name of victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. Next to individual claims for victims a small share is distributed to institutions that provide Holocaust education.
- 46.
During the Historiker Streit in Germany Jürgen Habermas for example claimed that the Shoah in its unprecedentedness is not comparable to other genocidal incidents. Putting the Shoah on one level with other human rights violations would relativize horrors of the Holocaust. (Habermas 1987).
- 47.
She referred to the internment camps operated by the British during the Second Boer War interning the families of Boer farmers.
- 48.
As I will show at another point the narrative connecting the importance of education with Jewishness is not restricted to imaginative realms, but is materialised as the community’s monetary commitment towards education, enabling all Jewish children to receive good private education, regardless of their economic background, for example. The community survey from 2019 also shows the relatively high level of secondary education among the Cape Town Jewish community (Serman 2019: 11).
- 49.
There is no open access database on the Jubuntu collection of outreach organisations. Yet, the follow up initiative, the Mensch network, has a homepage which presents different individuals and organisation.
- 50.
Lianne told me in a conversation we had more than a year after we had the interview that she will be operating independently from the Board and its formal structures.
- 51.
The ROI Summit is an initiative of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, an international Jewish foundation (https://www.schusterman.org/jewish-community-and-israel/signature-initiatives/roi- community/roi-summit).
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Denk, L. (2023). Organising the Charitable Diaspora Community. In: Jubuntu . J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-66887-0_6
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