Jews Color Race | Blacks as Jews | Black Jews

right it's always an effort to pull oneself away from the superior attractions of coughing cake but we have to get back to discussion um i would now like to call on jonas janga to chair the next session which is titled brexit jews slash black jews whatever that's meant to mean good afternoon and welcome back to our next panel on black ass jews jewish and black jews so it's my pleasure to introduce the two speakers uh professor linda weinhaus and dr daniel elise the presentation of dr daniel lees will be on a judaizing igbo who is jewish black jewish what jewish red jewish so please uh first of all i would like to to uh thank give thanks to fomc for organizing this it's a pleasure to be here again and i think the topic is indeed uh very important as gabrielle moscane mentioned earlier in a few years time there will be more and more people from other places that say they're jews as well and uh you know what we are discussing here today is really uh very important and uh they have been a very a great number of interesting talks so you're probably a bit tired so i will start uh with the story to uh as an attention grab so to say um an israeli friend of mine in switzerland told me the story uh well you have to know she's of uh moroccan jewish and russian jewish origin and her appearance she has black curly hair and she looks a bit of darkish so she went to this swiss folklore evening and she entered a tent and she had the feeling that all these blonde haired blue eyed people were staring at her and she felt uh you know very dark at this moment a week after that she took a train late in the evening and she enters the train the compartment and she sees all these black faces everybody is african all men so she's scared and she just rushes through uh the train and suddenly somebody stopped her and says hey hagan that's her name don't you recognize me we used to work together so but at this moment she just felt at this white person threatened by all these black faces so i just mentioned that to show you that um blackness or whiteness is really uh situational and um it depends on the social uh context and i would also like to think that you think for a second in this particular audience that we have uh here today looking at your colleagues how black or how white do you feel at this particular moment similarly you could think right now how jewish do you feel in comparison to your colleagues or non-jewish i mean jewish identity is in a way also a social construction so we need to be aware that both of them are social constructions um i have the feeling that if we talk about blackness today in israel that the issue of blackness is really um quite influenced by the immigration of uh the so-called infiltrators mr nanim over the last few years to israel and i had actually in intended to speak today more about the evil from nigeria but as my book is not yet published i will skip most of that nevertheless i will start with the end of my research about the evil what you need to need to know about the evil it's a people for about 20 to 30 million in southeast of nigeria where jewish identity is quite widespread today so it means many evil people identify themselves as jews to varying degrees or identify with jews so um i will not give you the history nevertheless um this jewish identity among the evil can be traced back to uh at least 250 years back so it's not something new but i will start with the end of my research which was here in israel when a number of igbo people had arrived in israel in the 1990s and one of them jim angelo went up to the high court to claim jewish identity not only for himself but for all of the evil people so he he wanted to have the law of return also applied to the evil people now um there was a high court decision in 1994 of course rejecting the uh igbo jewish identity um and what was most interesting for me of all the stakeholders that gave their opinion about the evil i think israeli academia was the most influential ones and not the rabbis we always think that it is the rabbis that define jewish identity but i can clearly say that africanist or israeli academia was actually the most um important factor in this so after this avenue to jewish identity in israel was blocked for the evil still more and more evil people were arriving in israel and so the people who wanted to get recognition as jews the evil who wanted to to be recognized the jews in israel had to convert to judaism and so they did they built the igbo jewish community in southern tel aviv and they converted to orthodox judaism actually to ultra-orthodox judaism but nevertheless their conversions were not recognized and most of them were deported in 2007 so halachically speaking they were actually jewish but not by the by the state so at the time when they were deported in 2007 it was exactly the time when more and more um africans especially from sudan uh south suzanne and eritrea entered israel through the sinai among them were also other african groups also some igbo but mostly uh sudan eritrea and southern sudan so i think since then blackness in israel as i have already pointed out is increasingly identified with these groups and you might recall i think it was in 2012 when you then had these uh demonstrations in southern tel aviv uh where people were saying uh you could hear voices i'm proud to be a racist and you were just waiting for the hand to get up um now eli ishai was one of the he was then the interior minister he was really trying to make a political benefit out of out of this political dissatisfaction uh with this problem and so he called for the immediate deportation of these people and also connecting um these immigrants with various uh sicknesses like aids like aids and this is kind of of ironic and uh we heard uh yehuda's talk before that um ali ishai was actually from benefiting from a political heritage like the panthers the black panthers that were identified with blackness in israel so he was really i think uh kind of whitewashing um himself through his position he he was taken on this um immigrants but that's not the only side of elie shy ali ishai was at the same time that he was arguing for the deportation of these african migrants he was at the same time one of the people who supported the ongoing immigration of ethiopian jews or the descendants of ethiopian jews through israel and there was a cabinet decision in 2010 that decided that the remaining eight thousand uh falash more so to say the descendants of the better israel who converted to christianity would be brought to israel so in a way african jews yes but none non-jewish africans know but it also hints that he somehow had a difficult uh a different conception about race uh for him the the falashmura were of the seed of um seed of israel that means that he had some kind of a conception of an invisible race yeah that was that went behind uh color beyond color and that's actually also uh i would say some of the a central zionist uh concept you know we were talking about uh discrimination and uh perceiving uh immigrants misrachi immigrants as being on the lower ladder but at the same time there was this this this image that people uh jews of all shades of color would reunite in israel and forming one body now another ironic uh thing about this issue of immigrants from sudan eritrea and is actually that if you look at the geographic map they're actually very very close to where um i okay thank you um so these people were actually coming from a cl from area that where it was very close to where the falash mura were coming but the difference was that one was perceived as jewish and the other is not okay so during these demonstrations in in southern tel aviv against these uh infiltrators from eritrea and sudan um sometimes better israel were attacked so it means they were in the neighborhood and people were accusing them of being sudanese or eritrean and they were being attacked so it means that the the discourse about the mystery name changed the discourse of blackness in israel and was affecting uh the better israel as well and it's actually i would say this is a threat to one of the central uh zionist tenets of the return of the exiles from all the places no matter what skin color they have so here is a next slide this is uh from the mass protest in 2011 uh whereas in kiryat malachi some homeowners um refused to rent their apartments to uh ethiopian jews and it shows that uh the discourse of our about blackness was changing uh in israel so that it more affected ethiopian jury um it also if you look at the picture you can see um mont araro painted his face white and black and so it's also a sign that there was emerging uh consciousness among the better israel of being black jews which which was actually not the case while they were living in ethiopia and hacker solomon has written an excellent article about that about the self-advocation in terms of skin color among the better israel before they migrated to israel uh the picture is very complex that agri-salomon describes there but among others she says that better israel actually self-added and identified their skin color as reddish and not black what also happened i think with the immigration of ethiopian jews to israel in 1984 85 and then again in 1991 that there was somehow a disruption of the global color hierarchy it means better israel ethiopian jury were immigrating to israel and were made one day after the arrival israeli citizens and part of the israeli jewish consent which means they were in somehow above um israeli arabs yeah they were going to the army they were serving in the army so they were part of the jewish public which somehow it it it didn't happen anywhere else in the world i'm not aware about this and it's it's somehow a disruption of the global uh color hierarchy which i think influences the way we talk about them today and of course if we talk about blackness in israel there is the rising discourse about israel of being an apartheid state and especially from the palestinian side or supporters of them they're strongly uh portraying this trying to propagate this discourse about israel and the better israel again are somehow disrupting this kind of argument of course uh israeli policymakers i think were are also quite aware about this and what i can see in the last couple of years uh the better israeli job injury has been they have been uh more and more integrated in in the portrayal of israel abroad and also in israel as well i mean there is more and more um ethiopian jews are more and more integrated in into portrayal as part of israeli society and and being a substantial part of israeli society and this is you of course probably know miss israel 2013 in their meeting uh on the occasion of barack obama's visit uh to israel and it was in it's actually quite interesting that she was that this meeting between her and barack obama uh was uh initiated and i think it's uh shimon peres played quite an important part in that as you can see also in the picture now barack obama now barack obama is considered to be the first black president of the united states which of course is also a bit problematic because is he african i mean he's of mixed heritage uh he doesn't share the african-american experience nevertheless he's considered to be the first uh african-american or black black american president and you might think that the issue of black african jews would be something new to him but then he has some family members that you probably also know uh on the on the left hand side you can see uh capers funnier rabbi capelesfonie he is the cousin of michelle obama he's a rabbi and he's also the president of the pan-african jewish association there is a connection to the evil story as well which i won't go into it right now which but will be in my book so barack obama is well aware about black african jury from the outside as black african jews uh this discourse is very much oriented to an american discourse to me to to an american concept about blackness i think and several people have written about it uh for instance stephen kaplan has uh has written an art articles about it also in in one of your books a prime i think he wrote about it uh so what is this what is exactly is this uh uh american discourse about blackness and then of course we have to go back to blackness being uh somehow drawing back on slavery and slavery uh drawing back on this earlier division of humanity here you have one of the i have to just excuse me for a second this is the earliest printed example of a classical t and o map so to say by going to design conceptualization of the world being divided into europe and being the descendants of the effect one of noah's sons africa with harm and asia with chem and david goldenberg has written a brilliant book about the title is the curse of harm about how in the 7th century blackness was increasingly identified with the status of of slavery which which which really wasn't the case before and then you have of course europe being more and more identified as being white and and asia is brown but not only brown but also as yellow and reddish and i think we have all heard also gray today now that's very interesting and i will particularly focus here on the reddish uh aspect of of asia because it affects also how jews were portrayed as descendants of shem if we go to the 15th century and here we'll show you another map this is a bit uh during the 15th century and also the 16th century there was quite a strong image about the jews being red or reddish and it was actually a geographical uh people were quite sure that at the end of the earth you can see it on on the top of the picture that there is a territory of the red jews yes you can find it on several maps around this time and these red jews were somehow threatening the christian christian europe and the the concept uh of course changed it didn't stay the same and you have for instance then in the 16th century talk about the alliance of the red and the black jews and this is kind of a apocalyptic vision that would destroy christian europe so again we have here jews described at the same time as being black and red and i think we have this uh heard this earlier i think it was in in the first talk we have heard today so i will skip to the next next map okay this this is a map it's one of the earliest descriptions of africa from the 16th century uh it's a it's a map drawn by olivia sanuto and here you have in the middle which is yellow the judeorum terra so from very early early times you have this idea of having jews in africa black jews in africa um together with these red jews in other places be it in the americas orbit them in asia so this uh exists at this at the very same time so again if you if you if you go back to this three-part division of the world of white europe uh black africa and the in between asia african jews is there somehow a disruptive element in this notion they're like a counter counter discourse at the same time if we go then up to the enlightenment jews were also somehow at the one side so you have jews being considered as blacks or being as reds but at the same time there's some this idea evolving about jews being an invisible race so wherever you would go jews will have different skin colors so if you go to africa they will be black like the neighbors if you go to europe they will be white like the neighbors but still they have the same race it means they still just marry themselves they wouldn't marry outsiders but they still share the same race and this is uh i talked about earlier about ishai's conception about the better israel being the seed of israel this is kind of a similar idea of an invisible jewish race i will go to the next slide um you have you might have seen this before um this was from an exhibition in nazi germany in 1938 it was about degenerate music like you had exhibitions about degenerate art and here you see a an interesting combination of blackness and jewishness as being the threat to a white aryan germany so this is a very negative depiction of course of of this combination of blacks blackness and jewishness but you can also find at the very same time positive descriptions about this combination of black jewish identity just so you can't see the whole picture um i say i didn't go i wouldn't go much into the topic of the evo nevertheless this is a book by a very influential anthropologist who published his book about the evo in 1938 so exactly the same year of the of the picture you saw earlier and he he writes about the ebon apart apart from his description as having many cultural parallels with the jews and describing them actually these perils in detail um boston george boston writes about the evil their skin color there are they are diverse degrees of color many ebows are truly as black as the proverbial coal others are almost as light-skinned as the natives of southern nigeria europe while a few are distinctly reddish so you know today we talked about um the different conceptions of how jews were figured as as black or as white or as reddish but you can similarly find it also among other peoples now for me of course during my research the interesting uh thing was that that uh not only were have you this different perception of the ebooks as being black at the same time and read but at the same time also being jewish so there's another parallel and here just to give you still a little idea about my research on the igbo you have nigeria and on the south east 2010 where you can just see also the dimension of this movement and uh going back to gabriel motskin what gabriel moskin said that we really have more uh of discussions about about these groups coming on and there is a little advertisement for my forthcoming book should be out in about the one month or two months time thank you thank you so much dr daniel so i just forgot to uh to give tell someone about your your background so you are uh from basel university university of basel rightly and uh thank you again for your contribution to this uh field uh on the jewish african jury and i know that you you taught about this topic in many different places and you published widely on this topic uh uh in english and in german and in hebrew as well so thank you again for your contribution so uh can we pick uh some question before moving on to the different to the next lecture yeah please can you move the microphone over there yes better um the crypto jewish claims in new mexico that to some extent we may be looking at a modern variant of the lost tribes of israel oh thank you that we may be looking at a modern variant of the lost tribes of israel narrative and i was thinking in particular some of you may be familiar with the legends of the river those are the little red jews they were called living on the banks of the san baton so i wonder if you think it might be might be influenced by the lost tribes of israel tradition you mean among the ibo yes of course of course but the discourse is also changing in nigeria i mean it's um if we look at how the better israel found acceptance in in israel uh it was first obadiah yourself of himself being mizrahi and it's interesting to see that he was so influential influential in in the decision being taken at the end that he said not that the better israel are are jews he actually said that they are from the lost tribe of dan which among the bet israel is not a very um widespread myth of origin actually there are several other myths of origin which are much more important now when the israeli the government in 1973 finally decided that they would come under the law of return and they then immigrated to israel this also affected many other groups in the world that also claimed jewish heritage or had some connection to judaism for instance you might be aware of the menashe in on the in the borderlands between um india and and burma where also they had different myths of origin but they were more or less accepted uh by amar also belonging so to say to the mizah camp of of having a israelite identity so um this um israelite myth of uh origin also gained a lot of popularity in nigeria it's actually um it it it was existing before but i think it particularly got strong in the 1990s uh were uh one central figure in an evil lore a figure called arie became more and more significant and airy if you go to the tanakh it's a son of god tribe of god so and as it as the belongings how to say to a lost tribe of israel seemed to be an entry point to israel um it also became more popular in nigeria so yes there's definitely like a return to this concept of the lost tribe also here in israel hello um can you introduce yourself again um leonard stein ben gurion university uh something that was missing um that we just discussed before with the idea of where does the black hebrews in israeli society fit into this picture when you're talking about blackness and africanness um if i'm not mistaken uh the movement from chicago went to nigeria before they came to israel so i i'm wondering where did they fit in in your construction of their placement when you were talking about african groups in israel and recognition and also what judith was just saying now in terms of claims of the that narrative of um being from the tribes since they are in this um they have that contention of being part claiming to be part of the original tribe whereas others who are living in israel jewish israelis might not be their recognition in that whole discourse okay i mean when looking at the bouquets especially at the high court case decision on the jewishness of the evil they were referring to an earlier high court case about the black hebrew israelites from dimona i think from 1972 were there was also of course a complete rejection of of their jewishness of any of having any kind of relation to to the jewish people among the black hebrew israelites especially if you go to the time or two earlier movements from where they came from for quite a while especially i think in the 19 the beginning of the 20th century uh there was quite a strong self-identification among them of having a connection to the better israel because at the time the issue of the better israel became more well-known in the united states jacques fetlovich visiting the united states and also visiting those black hebrew communities that already had been in existence so um they they connected their jewish identity with uh with the better israel uh identity now uh the black hebrew israelites um they had a hard time here in israel a lot of them were deported but still people were arriving and i think they were only able to stay here in israel because of african-american political pressure so that's i think that's why they were able to stay here but with the immigration of the better israel to israel and with their long-time residents here in israel i think their uh the israeli public became more uh ready in a way for black african jews or yeah and i think um i although you know the the group i was working with the ibo from nigeria were deported at the end uh more and more groups in africa or in the black and african diaspora are identifying as as uh as jews it's it's a very strong trend and i think uh one trend in israel israeli society is to be uh to to give more acceptance to uh these groups that's one that's one stream you know this one one development the other one is of course uh this this evolving anti-blackness which you can also observe the question will be you know which one is stronger i mean there's some integrating tendencies of uh integrating the better israel more and more and we always speak about the problems but if you look at uh for instance if there is um you know karen high this is um is organizing events in the jewish jasper there's always an israeli band with better israel always there's never an israeli band almost never with no better israel in it and more and more uh cultural productions that are coming from israel it's very important that there is at least one better israel there so the the the picture is is changing somehow i'm um we're actually uh working or hoping that the project of ours will get approval where we will investigate projects by the black hebrew israelites from demona in african countries with the support of the israeli foreign ministry and that's like something completely new so we can see you know we have different tendencies here and in a way there is one tendency is clearly to get to give more acceptance and to understand those groups as being part as being jewish as well thank you more question yes over there how's the microphone microphone please hi my name is danny edmasso i'm a student in berlin university my question is from what you learn who's it you because this was when you're one of your titles is this personal definition or it's like but you learn from it i mean i would like to hear your opinion definition was jew well your research my research was about in israel especially looking at the ipo case i was looking also at their earlier identification as jews in nigeria and but coming to israel i was looking who is deciding on who is a jew and as i said you know the general conception is that it is the rabbinite that at the end of the day decides but the rabbinate uh is really relying on what i found is relying on the opinions of anthropologists africanists so the rabbinate is actually drawing back on research that is being done in the academia and that was also the case with the better israel it was the very same thing i think academia our scholarly research about israel was crucial in bringing about recognition among the rabbis so academia is very important there are several actors i mean it's not it's and sometimes it's it's you wonder you know why why the name inashi from india got the recognition while the ibo not because in my in my view uh it's they they both of them can make a case and you can argue against it the same way or not so it's it's a political issue at the end of the day but uh i mean the immigration of the better israel it has has received a lot really there's tons of research about the better israel and it's it's a i mean considering the number of better israel that that are actually in in israel uh it's really amazing you know how much research has been done and the the awareness also of people outside of israel about that there is that they are better israel in israel is there um so you know it's it's somehow um you know if if there is one group of black jews well then there are probably others as well you know it makes it builds a bridge somehow okay so thank you so much uh dr daniel elise uh we'll skip to our next papers from professor linda vinehouse so on the program you saw probably that there is a lecture is not here today so she she wasn't able to attend this uh symposium with us at van lee so we'll skip to professor linda vine house you are professor of english and women's studies at the community college of baltimore county the state of maryland in usa you have a rich academic career in the field of postcolonial and holocaust literature and also in women's studies in postcolonial literature and accordingly you are the co-author with a frame seeker of underpost colonial eyes figuring the jewish in contemporary british writing published two years ago in 2012. one of your fields of expertise is modern literature of english expression that you have published widely on authors such as doris lessing alice monroe nadine gardiner nobel prize of literature today and your chapter on south african jewish writer the topic we'll talk about right now will appear on in your forthcoming book entitled the edinburgh companion to anglophone jewish literature okay it's not my book i only have a chapter okay but it's a great thank you yes so the title of your presentation jewish between black and white jewish identities in south african jewish novel okay please professor what do i need to do ma lo en li no indie okay um first of all my paper is based on the literature of white south african writers so i i beg the indulgence of both anthropologists and sociologists and historians in the room um it is my intention to discuss a few representatives of south african jewish novels in the historical context and to demonstrate the ways in which jewish identity is constructed in them over time and hopefully to give a context to discuss the construction of south african jewish identity today since south african jews who came to south africa were initially from an anglo-german background and then later in increasing numbers from eastern europe since they began as peddlers and store owners and progressed in the second and third generation to lives of great professional and economic success since they encountered social and institutional barriers that were later to a large extent overcome many argue that the story of jewish life in south africa was no different from jewish life elsewhere in the diaspora especially in england and the united states yet however similar jewish life in south africa is to jewish life elsewhere from earliest times it was determined by their somewhat enigmatic position within the bohr brit black axis um the history of south african jewish literature in the 20th century can be usefully divided into pre-apartheid and post apartheid apartheid and post-apartheid the first period was characterized by anxiety occasioned by the large immigration of jews from eastern europe and we've heard quite a number of people mention today the attitude toward the all student right and for many of these immigrant jews were regarded is um not possible twist it wasn't possible for them to assimilate into european south african society and consequently in the south african context not white um the writer um the writer sarah gertrude gertrude millen was born on march 19 1889 in lithuania like so many south african jews and her family settled on the banks of the val river in the kimberley area where her father opened a trading store they lived in an isolated area near the diamond diggings in kimberley where there were very few whites and they felt surrounded and and threatened by the um colored population there when i used the word colored in this paper i'm using it in the south african meaning of descendants of mixed race a dominant theme in millen's work especially in her best known novel god's step-children 1924 is the evils of miscegenation some interpretations of millan's work see her anxiety regarding miscegenation as a screen for the widespread concern in the jewish community regarding their status as whites in god's step-children millen disparages the children of parents of mixed race while emphasizing the fears of those colored who appear white barry the protagonist of god's step-children dreaded that some white person would feel that he quote was not as he was and search and discover why sometimes he even wanted to say write out and have done with it look here i must tell you i'm not really white at this time jews were scorned by both whites and blacks because as the owners of concession stores that served blacks they were considered exploiters by the blacks in rhodesia they were they even had a special name for jews majuta and white kafirs by the whites in the novel the coming of the lord 1928 millen deals directly with the way in which both whites and blacks disparage jews the protagonist saul becomes a doctor he's a jew becomes a doctor and aligns himself with the one black doctor tetyana durden the africana had the same feeling about saul that the poor whites had about the native doctor tatyana he credited him because he was alien with mysterious power as for titiana when saul proffers offers him friendship he would have preferred if it had not been a jew for a jew had not the same standing as another european of his own kind the jewish fears of exclusion were exacerbated by the nazi sympathies of the national party prior and during the second world war in 1937 marlon made a speech in which he declared the jews opposed discrimination because they feared discrimination against them in south africa this means miscegenation ironically once the nationalists come to power their attention is primarily focused on the country's mountain mounting racial problems and then the jews status as privileged whites was insured they are needed to bolster the right position when jews were included in white south africa jews responded by seeking invisibility and by trying to de-emphasize and suppress the memory of africana anti-semitism throughout the years of apartheid jews desired to fit into white south african society which meant that as a community they did not officially oppose apartheid um um okay though a disproportionate number um of what gideon shimoni calls deviant jews um were active in the anti-apartheid movement most jews however occupied a position between these two polarities they were prominent in the respectable bodies and activities which oppose the government writing in the 1960s dan jacobson reflects the predominant temper of the jewish community under apartheid that was non-observant but largely affiliated zionistic haunted by the specter of the holocaust and still subject to anti-semitism in south africa jacobson's parents were not particularly religious but his father insisted that the children attend hebrew lessons and the synagogue as an assertion of identity as the nazi madness swept across europe in his autobiographical essay my child my jewish childhood at 2000 jacobson's description of growing up jewish in south africa in the 1930s and 40s he bitterly remembers the endemic anti-semitism of the time quote growing up jewish i believe encouraged many of us to feel a quasi-instinctive sympathy with other despised and unjustly treated racial groups in south africa in the overwhelming majority the members of the jewish community accepted this dispensation yet of the jewish boys in my school i never heard them using the violent and abusive language against people of darker skin that was common coin the fact remains that the bad thing that probably embraces all others was the anti-semitism of a violent kind and of epidemic proportions that was abroad during my boyhood in his semi-autobiographical novel the beginners 1962 jacobson wrote of the discrimination experience by jews of his generation the effects of the holocaust on their lives and of the benevolent attitude of many jews towards blacks when in the same month as the declaration of the independence of the state of israel the africana nationalists came into power in south africa the protagonist of jacobson's novel joel glickman decides to leave the country for israel joel leaves first for israel and then later to england as an escape from quote the haphazard disorder and fortuitousness of the country of his birth towards which he feels estrangement pity guilt fear contempt roused at one time and or another by every group in it the blacks the coloreds the indians the africanas the english the anxious prospering jews held together only by their needs and greeds with no other shared ties of history culture kinship loyalty or even human sympathy in jacobson's works the only relationship between whites and blacks is a master and servant relationship though his jewish characters are frankly critical of the system that fails to treat the black man as a human being in his wildly and fallen giant short story the zula and the zeda jacobson suggests that there might be a natural affinity between jews and blacks a young zulu polis is hired by a jewish family to look after their senile father jacobsen writes of the touching connection that evolves between the old man and his caregiver despite their racist environment quote the young bearded zulu and the old bearded jew from lithuania walked together in the streets of the town that was strange to them both neither paulus nor old man grossman were aware that when they crossed the street hand in hand there were white men who averted their eyes from the site of this degradation which could come upon a man when he was senile and dependent thus jacobson reveals the unbridgeable gap between white and black south africans unless the white man happens to be old senile dependent and in this case jewish nadine gordimer whose career spans and and i didn't only pick authors that got the nobel prize um whose career spans the apartheid and post-apartheid era fully articulated at length what was and would continue to be her primary focus as a south african writer in an interview in 1965 with alan ross she said a white south african brought up on the side of this excuse me on the soft side of the color bar i have gone through the whole package deal evolution that situation has to offer unquestioning acceptance of the superiority of my white skin questioning of these attitudes as i grew up and read and experienced and finally rebirth as a human being among other human beings which all this means in the face of discrimination that sorts them into colors and races whether i like it or not this has been the crucial experience of my life i have no religion no political dogma except my conviction that the color bar is wrong and utterly indefensible nonetheless though gordimer's main focus has been on the color bar she has written about jewishness in her essays and novels which reveal an internalization of anti-semitic stereotypes in her essays about her father and in the fictional characters who resemble him she harshly criticizes those shopkeepers who like her father embraced the mores of white supremacy out of their own sense of inadequacy in her essay in the new yorker entitled my father leaves home 1990 she denounces her father because quote he shattered at the black man on the other side of the counter who swept the floor and ran errands and he threw the man's weekly pay grudgingly at him i saw there was someone my father had made afraid of him she also explains the source of her feelings of disdain towards her father and towards judaism if the phylacteries and skullcap were kept somewhere we children never saw them he went fasting to the synagogue on the day of atonement and each year on the anniversaries of the deaths in that village of the old people whom the wife and children had never seen he went again to light a candle feeble flame who were they in the quarrels between husband and wife she derided them as ignorant and dirty you slept like animals round the stove sticking up garlic you bathed once a week we children knew how low it was to be unwashed and whipped into anger he knew the lowest category of all in her country this country you speak to me as if i was a catholic gordon maintains the stance of an outsider a spectator towards her father and the legacy he carries in her early and most autobiographical novel the lying days 1953 the gentile protagonist helen shaw shares many aspects of gortama's own journey towards becoming a human being among other human beings the jews in the novel are all described in stereotypical fashion and most of them are depicted as ugly and at times not even human through helen's eyes we see her jewish friend joel aaron's father who owns a jew store at the mine as an ugly short man his wife having puffy hands with hardened flesh growing up around unkempt nails her body in a cheap silk dress the body of jewish women from certain parts of europe the swollen doll's body her movements were like a horse and the old man at the aaron's home has the face of an old dog two of gomer's novels a sport of nature in 1987 and no time like the present 2012 have jewish protagonists who are portrayed positively after having escaped overcome or rejected their jewish background through an identification with black liberation in a sport of nature hillelah becomes an ambassador's mistress then the second wife of a black cadre in the movement for pan-african liberation and eventually after his murder the wife of the leader of a newly independent african nation even in this novel however there are traces of the negative depictions of jews we have seen in gorham's early works for example as pauline hilala's aunt grows older the narrator relates that relates that she lifted her head two streaks of gray now at the hairline like mosaic horns in no time like the present which takes place in the new south africa gortamar depicts contemporary expressions of jewish separatism as a variant on the ethnic and racial divisions that would be better overcome in the rebuilding of the nation while revisiting the lack of support that have been shown in the community for jews who were involved in anti-apartheid activities the main characters are an interracial couple veterans of the struggle jabalil who is black and stephen reed whose mother is jewish steven's brother jonathan who has enjoyed a privileged lifestyle under apartheid now explores his past and his identity in its aftermath he holds a bar mitzvah for his son a celebration stephen views as inexplicable since they had no religion growing up besides for their circumcision a condition which is obsessively mentioned in the novel and which is described as some atavistic whim of their mother jonathan explains his gesture towards jewishness as follows it isn't enough to be black or white finished and clogged the way it was in the bad old days our sympathy for jonathan and his non-jewish wife brenda however is forestalled since quarterman makes it clear that they would have nothing to do with stephen during the bad old days when he was on the run from the authorities though they like so many whites jews and non-jews suffer from amnesia suffering from amnesia now claimed that they were not personally involved in the bad years except in being white steven for his part asserts jabu's superiority to them to him and in her history to any but exterminated jews or arabs no time like the present reflects the number of ways in which jewish identity is now being reconstructed in light of the fall of apartheid and rising conflict over the israeli-arab conflict some jews turned to judaism to define their identity while others often the children of anti-apartheid activists confront the community with complaints against the way their parents were treated the new the new jewish writers in south africa began writing in the 1980s when the regime was most depressive in reaction to the rapid crumbling of apartheid and continued writing into the 1990s and beyond reflecting its end and aftermath since the fall of apartheid south african jury has struggled mightily with the record of the south african jewish board of deputies that worked along with the apartheid regime and the widespread support for israel's military and security ties with apartheid south africa the controlling metaphor in tony espell's aptly titled novel the persistence of memory 2004 is the perfect proto-natural memory of the jewish protagonist paul sweetbread in the land of national dysamnesia esprit's struggle with his role as a jew in the south african army is one aspect of the particularly jewish struggle with the legacy of apartheid after the collapse of apartheid paul testifies between the before the truth and reconciliation committee regarding his participation in the massacre on orders from his racist anti-semitic commanding officer captain liddy of retreating people's liberation group troops his ability to totally recall the events is an analog for the charge of the committee yet to underscore the limitations of the ability of the commission and post south afric's post post-apartheid south africa to confront the past his testimony is discredited by his psychiatrist who claims that paul's discovery of his father's suicidal body as a child caused him to have delusions of memory like gomer in no time like the present esprill notes that the move towards ethnic and religious assertiveness taking place in south africa today despite the official move away from identity politics um oh that was the end of the sentence sorry towards the end of the persistence of memory paul considers changing his name or as he says returning to my roots it's all the rage among my co-evils to hebraicize and saul's schwartzbart has a nice dignified sound to it i could be my own grandfather paul's suffering in the army under his anti-semitic commander combined with his guilt over the role he was forced to play in it leads him to a crisis of identity as paul remarks who is paul's sweet bread a nice jewish christian boy a liberal soldier in the army a lousy good south african a varsit africana englishman can such a person even exist novels written by south african jews throughout the 20th century revealed that when the colonial government in south africa was threatened socially and economically by an influx of eastern european jews jews were not considered white and their close connections with blacks was deplored some jews at that time in an attempt to distance themselves from such an association decried any taint of miscegenation some writers internalized the prejudices against them describing jews as ugly and unwashed when the nationalist government perceived itself as an embattled minority jews became white and jews became invested in maintaining that identity a sampling of books and articles written by south african jews from the 1980s to the present testifies to the wide range of jewish responses to apartheid's decline claudia brody in her article from the brotherhood of man to the world to come traces rabbinic literature in south africa claiming that south african rabbis responded to the anxiety and terror during the state of emergency in the 1980s by becoming apolitical inward-looking and mystical the zionism that was encouraged by the segmentation in south african society and its emphasis on the separate development of different cultural and ethnic groups has been losing ground in a climate in which anc leaders often express pro-arab and anti-israel sentiments the anc supports the application of apartheid discourse against israel as we see in its endorsement of bds in 2012 and of the iaw this year um there has also been an increase in street in strict orthodox observance it is hypothesized that the rapid transformation and the insecurities created by social changes in south africa after 1994 as well as increased levels of crime pushed more jews to embrace the global trend towards greater religious observance some jews had thought that the new south africa would signal a movement away from separatism for instance alby sacks in his memoir the soft vengeance of a freedom fighter 1990 described a multi-racial ideal for the new south africa and postulated that the end of apartheid signaled the end of the importance of differences between racist and ethnic groups instead the changes have caused some south african jews to lament that quote south africa's transformation to democracy has not seemed to open up the community to new possibilities but has instead made it more inward looking and insular this contradiction m is evident in an article by orrin steyer on the south african jewish complex in which he analyzes that's a complex like buildings not a complex like an obsession okay but i like the double entendre actually um yeah anyway steyr analyzes the proximity of south africa's holocaust center that opened in cape town in 1999 to the south african jewish museum that opened in 2000. the holocaust center contains a display on anti-semitism in south africa in the 1930s and 40s and establishes a link between africana anti-semitism and the racist ideology of nazism the south african jewish museum however asserts the commonality with the white minorities shaping of the country's economic growth steya's discussion of these institutions shows the way contemporary expressions of jewish identity and jewish representation in the post-apartheid era must grapple with the contradictory history of power and powerlessness in the life of the jewish community in south africa thank you professor linda weinhaus we can now open the floor to question discussion or debate on this very interesting topic want to pick the microphone first could you just say something briefly about contemporary south african jewish um so um so there's a few different things first there's the example i gave of esprit who's looking at the the legacy of um you know what they had to serve in the army and what it meant growing up jewish in south africa there are also other writers who there are writers who deal with the situation the crime the the crime uh situation in south africa um there's one i've the name i'm not gonna think of the name right now but it's about two two jewish men who own a furniture store in johannesburg and how they're staying in the neighbor the bad neighborhood even though most of the jewish clientele has disappeared and how they're robbed like every other day um there are also novels that maybe are similar to what claudia browdy is talking about in terms of the mystical element in jewish writing again i i'm sorry i don't have it written down i won't think of it right now but there's um a sephardic jewish writer who writes about um italian jew jews living in south africa and it's very mystical and also there are jewish writers who are i don't know i guess you would describe them as transparent um i'm thinking of a writer like this writer i do remember damon galgot who um who is a jewish writer but you cannot tell from his writing that he is a jewish writer um it right there's nothing to identify him as being particularly jewish either in in his own statements about himself or in his novels and he he's quite famous in south africa today and also outside of south africa has quite a number of novels and the most famous is called a good doctor and he's definitely dealing with the post-apartheid era and the legacy of apartheid but not from a jewish perspective at there all a question in the back i have no i would have comment um i think it's it's interesting what you noted about the inward-looking um jewish community in south africa and i think we talked about this earlier but um i forgot his name now but there is a group of south african black jews the lemba yes and and you would find probably similar tendencies in in in their writings i'm thinking of one particular author which whose name i forgot right now but i think this inward looking yeah you could also find it it's in south africa then i don't know if people heard about it but the chief rabbi in south africa last year um this past year made a big campaign that all the jews in south africa should observe shabbat for one time and it was like a really a mass movement and i think um and you know and every people were signing up online to and you could you could get matched with the family to observe shabbat and i think maybe it's part of this um you know now a return more of identification um kind of ironically um in the pre in the post-apartheid era with with jewish identity and even in in terms of religious observance i have a question too uh in the field of uh artistic performance uh do you think that uh uh south africa and jewish uh produce uh something uh reflecting uh this uh period of apartheid in south africa in their you know different performance well probably gordon is the best example i mean as i mentioned her interest is really her interest was really the color bar right her interest was really the the injustice of apartheid and so um she has a long career she wrote many books and each book um chronicles a different period of time so when there was um it seemed like there would be some chance of cooperation between blacks and whites in south africa um she has a novel that depicts that and um she has um um so each stage in the up you know it wasn't like a monolithic time the apartheid era it lasted for a long time and each stage along the way she has a novel to depict it also another question yeah i wonder if you've um could comment on any parallels that you might see in american literature american jewish literature um i'm thinking of bernard malamuds the tenants and um and mr sandler's planet by saul bellow and other novels of the of the late 60s which strike me in jewish novels of and writings that philip roth's short story epstein they strike me as as perhaps having a parallel to this uh moment of a breakdown of a possible romance a black jewish romance um not not a personal romantic involvement no i know what you mean and um and and and in the um in the aftermath of competing nationalisms and of uh of of growing urban problems um uh the the full nature of incompatibility becomes more apparent than it had before um some of the things you referred to i don't know sparked that recognition i wonder if you yeah i i'm not by i don't know all that much about american jewish writers even about american writers but um i i think that what i was thinking about when you were asking the question is a movie like the pawn broker for instance right the pawn broker which was a novel by wallace that's right right okay and um and and i definitely when i do this work i think a lot about philip roth um even this whole business of the anxiety about passing and i'm thinking of the human stain for instance right where when the black person wants to pass he he chooses to be a jew right so the kind of intermediate um um position of the jew in the in a racially divided society definitely so close to debate and thank you both of you for your presentation thank you so okay much you very much indeed oh without any further ado we'll go on to the next session i think we are actually running a little ahead of time incredibly for conference which means that we'll have a little bit more time for discussion at the end and i'd like to call on professor emily buddick who is chair of english at hebrew university of jerusalem to chair the next session

Channel: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute - מכון ון ליר בירושלים

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Keywords: Yonah Zianga, Daniel Lis, Rob Baum, Linda Weinhouse, Jews Color Race, Blacks as Jews, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, יהדות, Jewish identitie, anti-Semitism, anti sematism, race relations, race, identity politics, University, Jewish, Color, דת, מדעי החברה, פוליטיקה, היסטוריה, history, religion, גזע, van leer, van leer institute, ואן ליר, מכון ואן ליר, מכון ון ליר, ון ליר

Id: f-P5AUIFBRU

Length: 73min 2sec (4382 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 01 2014