Vryburg's Rabbis:

There is little clarity on the tenure of the local Rabbis who served the community. According to the Jewish Life Volume II study, Vryburg had at least eight Rabbis - perhaps more. As I ma not privy to the sources, I am unable to corroborate their list. The local spiritual leaders also served as the shochet, kosher butcher and cheder teacher. The most qualified of them was Rabbi Kemmelman, who went on to have a distinguished career.

 

Prior to the appointment of a full time Rabbi (presumably in 1926), there was Mr. Lieberman and Woolf Goldwater. He was the son-in-law of Grand Hotel owner David Smollan (married to Matilda Goldwater) and gravitated towards Vryburg after his wife Dora died and David and Matilda moved there.

 

It seems plausible that prior to the appointment of a full time Rabbi, the Vryburg community was served by outside Rabbis serving multiple small communities. One such resource was Rabbi Ephraim Menasseh Stein, who later served in Worcester as Rabbi, from 1922 - 1947. His grandson Sorrel Kerbel, reports: "He arrived at Cape Town in 1912, having gained smicha from Telz yeshiva. On arrival at Cape Town, he acted as itinerant rabbi visiting country communities as far as Vryburg."

 

Based on The Jewish Life Volume II study, there were at least 8 Rabbis. Not listed in the study was Reverend Hyman Joseph Oleska who served for a few months in 1943. This was after Rabbi Slonim left and before Rabbi Bak. Curiously he was born in South Africa. The stints listed by the Jewish Life Study are somewhat confusing and the tenures, I list are based on their work and my research. Most served short terms. 

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1. Mr. Lieberman (1914).

2. Woolf Goldwater (1917-1925).

3. Reverend Leibowitz (1926).

4. Reverend Orenstein (1931).

5. Reverend Rossenbaum (1932).

6. Levi Isaac Slonim, (1932-1942),

7. Reverend Hyman Joseph Oleska (1943).

8. Rabbi Moshe (Moses) Bak (1945),

9. Rabbi Yehoshua Kemelman (1946-1951),

10. Rabbi Moshe Kiviatovsky / Kay (1952-1961).

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Little is known of Rabbis Lieberman and Leibowitz. The Lieberman surname is rare in South Africa and it seems that the first Rabbi was Morris Lieberman (Liberman). My assumption is based on the fact that in 1915 an A. Zarif (probably Abraham Zeiref) made a donation listed as a Vryburg contribution in the Zionist Record. His daughter Rebecca was married to Morris Lieberman (1884-1947). Lieberman left the pulpit and became a bicycle manufacturer. At this point, I know nothing about Leibowitz and Rossenbaum. There is reference to a Reverend Sholam Orenstein in a Government Gazette. He was appointed marriage officer on 31 March 1933 and is listed as the Rabbi of Vryheid. A Rabbi Moses Bak passed away in 1955. 

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Rabbi Slonim:

Rabbi Slonim was the longest serving Rabbi and oversaw the building of the Synagogue with Simon Lieberthal. He was raised in Hebron and came from a long line of rabbis. His father Rav Yakov Yosef Slonim was the chief rabbi of Hebron. His son, Meir Slonim, told me that his father first served the Middelberg (Transvaal) community in the Transvaal, then Vryburg and then Witbank. Witbank had a more substantial community than Vryburg. After Witbank he moved to Oudtshoorn, where he passed away. According to his death certificate, he was merely 43 at the time of his passing. Rabbi Slonim once famously officiated a Congregational Church wedding ceremony in order to help out the priest, who was a friend and had double booked himself. His son, Meir Slonim is quick to reassure that his father was given permission by the Beth Din to conduct the marriage. His wife Shoshana (Rose) ran a cafe. Her sister, Dora, was married to Morrie Wolpert from Pudimoe and tragically died in 1940, due to complications during childbirth. Rose and Meir Slonim had two children, Cleara and Meir.

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Avi Hechter vividly recalls Rabbi Slonim slaughtering chickens and sheep in his yard. Lorna Toube (Mendelow) reminiscences: “Behind my grandparents’ home there was a chicken run and we had to catch chickens for Shabbat meals, which were then taken to the shochet to kill before Shabbat.” The home of the rabbi was next to the shul.

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In an interview with Eve Hrowitz in 1983, Joe Joffe spoke in glowing terms of Rabbi Slonim: "Rabbi Slonim was the essence of a most wonderful human being, he was not the money grabber, money meant nothing to him, like a real proper Israeli chalutz [pioneer]. Money was nothing, brandy was more important, and he and I were the main workers at the Chevra Kadisha in Vryburg."

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With the departure of Rabbi Slonim, Vryburg briefly retained the services of Rabbi Moses or Moshe Bak whose tenure was short lived and seems to have been shrouded with some controversy.

 

Precious little is known about him. Thanks to Elona Stonefield of the Beit Hatfutsot project -we learn that he served as a Rabbi in Rustenburg from 1925 to 1930.  According to Geni, Rabbi Bak was born in 1890 and married to Chaia Dvora Bak. He had 7 siblings. The couple had a son Benzion (Bencel) who was born in 1916 in Perem / Perm, Russia. Perm is outside the Pale of Settlement. Benzion was born there as his parents were war refugees. According to Rootsbank, Chaya reached South Africa in February 1926 (aboard the Dunluce Castle) and was headed for Rustenburg. She was aged 43 and Benzion was 10. They are both listed as coming from Pasvoten - Pašvitinys (Pashvitin) is in Lithuania. On May 4, 1915, during World War I, the Russian military exiled Pashvitin Jews into the interior of Russia.

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Rabbi Kemmelman:

Rabbi Bak was replaced by Rabbi Kemelman who was very popular with the community. He built the town's outdoor mikva and established a choir. From Vryburg, he went to Potchefstroom, then East London and Sydney, Australia. Rabbi Kemelman was a highly qualified Rabbi and in addition to being ordained by nine different rabbis he later completed two PhDs. He was also a gifted musician and had a renowned voice. Sheila (Frank) Grant whose family lived in Vryburg twice (1948-1953 and 1967-1970), notes: "I remember Rabbi and Rebbetzin Kemelman so well.  He was a wonderful teacher and I attribute my great love for Jewish religion and history largely to his teaching.  He also had a beautiful singing voice and established an excellent choir at the Shul.  Myra Joffe (Sutin) was the star of that choir." Joe Joffe recalled the impact of Rabbi Kemelman. "Within a matter of a few months he made a choir for the children, and I want to tell you it was the pleasure of the week to go on Friday night to shul and to listen to him daven, he had a lovely voice, and the children .. subsequently I decided that the children should take over the service on Friday night, which was done."

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Rabbi Kay-The Last Rabbi:

Rabbi Kay was the last Vryburg rabbi. According to his daughter, Pearl Kaplan, he left Poland for Mandatory Palestine and then came to South Africa, as there were limited work opportunities in the Yishuv. Rabbi Kay reached South Africa in 1947, first ministering the Upington community. He met and married his wife, Lilly Saitill. Lilly was born in Willowmore in the Eastern Cape. After Upington (1948-1950), Kay became the rabbi for Belville and then Vryburg. From Vryburg the family moved to Parys. Mickey Katz recalls coming home from his weekly cheder lessons and his dad would ask him what Rabbi Kay had taught him. Mickey would tell his dad that the rabbi taught him how to recite Kaddish and his dad would call the rabbi to suggest that he teaches his son something a little more uplifting. The rabbi’s standard retort was – “Mr. Katz, please G-d your son will learn Kaddish by the time you pass away.”

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His daughter, Pearl Kaplan, recalls her father was an “intellectual." She continued: "He probably didn't have many people with whom to have discussions but formed a close friendship with the Catholic Priest whose name, if I remember correctly was Father Forgan.  Father Forgan often came to our house and enjoyed being with us children.  We used to call him Uncle Father because my parents respectfully called him Father. He was a warm and pleasant man who obviously had no family of his own.”

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After Rabbi Kay left, a shochet came from Kimberley for a few years to slach (slaughter). Shelley Skudowitz (Muskat) lucidly recalls the Kimberley shochet “cutting the head off a chicken every week in our garden. Then it would run around, headless. I hated those days and hid away when he was coming. We kept chickens in a hok (cage) and I soon realized why.” 

 

The struggle for rural rabbis:

Holding on to rural rabbis was not easy and Vryburg was blessed with long tenures, compared to some other country communities. This speaks volumes for the community. Rabbi Kemelman was, infamously, poached by the Potchefstroom community. Meish Arenson recollects that the Potch elders met him five miles out of town, in order to consummate the muddy transfer. Poetic justice was served, however, and he soon left for East London. Describing the challenges faced by country communities in hiring rabbis, Paul Cheifitz (page 84) explains in his dissertation on the Potchefstroom ommunity: 

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"It seems that many country Rabbis moved from town to town with great frequency. Better financial offers often tempted them away from their posts. Some Synagogue committees were harder to satisfy than others and there were often clashes between personalities which caused problems that could not be overcome. The country Rabbi had to be extremely diplomatic in order to maintain good relations with his congregation and hold onto his post. Often times the impetus to move on came from the Rabbi himself who might have been unhappy in his post and could no longer meet the demands of the community."

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In 1961 the community tried in vain to recruit a number of candidates and came closest with Rabbi Koren, who was at Ermelo. In the end, the rabbi and the community failed too agree terms as Rabbi Koren doubled his ask. For a community of 35 paying members the cost was probably to high. From the minutes of the Shul Committee, preserved by Graham Brodovcky, the shortage of spiritual leaders facing country communities is all to apparent. In the words the the then Chairman, Mike Allen, "Ministers were a very, very, very scarce commodity." As late as 1966, when Jack Katz was chairman of congregation, he lamented in his report to the AGM of 6 November: "We are without a Minister, and the likelihood of obtaining the service of one, was remote." The absence of a rabbi no doubt had an impact on the community and may have accelerated its decline - which was already underway. 

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Mr. Chien:

Unable to recruit a reverend, Mr. Eliezer Chien, who resided in the International Hotel, was retained to teach the local kids cheder. Mr. Chien, who was recruited with the help of Mr. Klawansky, arrived in late February 1961. He was paid R 75 a month and given accommodation. His role was made permanent by June and his salary doubled. Graham Brodovcky shared three photos (posted below) of the classes Mr. Chien tutored in the 1950s.

 

There was much myth surrounding Mr. Chien. The popular narrative was that he had survived the Holocaust. Maurice Joffe recounts: “Poor man had terrible tremors in one hand and shook like crazy. We believed it may have been post traumatic syndrome from the war. As kids, we were, at times, not nice to him....we used to egg him on to talk about the Holocaust as it really drove him crazy....I remember him cutting class short one day due to anxiety. Kids being kids..... his family was murdered by the Nazis. …He was a good, wonderful and pious man. We were very lucky to have him. May his soul rest in peace.” During the course of collecting Vryburg anecdotes a number of people confessed to having giving Mr. Chien a hard time and playing pranks on him.

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Decades later, we can confirm that he was not a Holocaust survivor and in fact left for South Africa from Lithuania in was naturalized whilst living in Bloemfontein in 1940. His first wife passed away and he divorced his second wife in 1961. He was living in Nigel before leaving for Vryburg. 

 

Later, after Mr. Chien left for Sandringham Gardens in 1969, Evelyn Pagoda briefly taught the local kids Hebrew, followed by Esme Rauff. This is all the more remarkable as Esme was a convert. Esme and the community were assisted by Victor Ressman of Bloemhof. Esme’s eldest son, David Rauff, recounts that after his retirement to Sandringham Gardens, Mr. Chien “escaped and came to Vryburg by train to attend a barmitzvah and Rhita Muskat and Boytjie had to drive him back to Johannesburg. He really did not want to go back.”