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NEWS
Zimbabwe Jewry In Survival Mode As Country Disintegrates
by D. Saks, South Africa
Zimbabwe's small and aging Jewish community is finding it
increasingly difficult to keep its institutions afloat as the
mounting economic and political crisis in the country hits
ever closer to home.
Zimbabwe, a large, landlocked republic on South Africa's
northern border which once boasted one of Africa's most
successful economies, has gone the way of other Southern
African states in recent years. The ZANU-PF regime of Robert
Mugabe, which has ruled the country since it attained
independence in 1980, has implemented ever more reckless
measures to maintain its power. Amongst other things, it has
forcibly seized white-owned farm land for "redistribution" to
its supporters, with the result that farm production has
plummeted and Zimbabwe, once a food exporter, now faces mass
starvation.
South African Jewish leaders, who visited Zimbabwe last week
to take part in the biennial Zimbabwe Board of Deputies and
Central African Zionist Federation conferences in the
capital, Harare, and otherwise lend assistance to the
community, painted a bleak picture of the situation in the
embattled country. Michael Mensky, who represented the Jewish
Agency in South Africa, commented that at one, empty, petrol
station, he counted over 600 cars queued up waiting for
petrol to arrive, even though when, or even if, it ever would
come was not known.
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, Spiritual Leader to the African
Jewish Congress countries, pointed out the disastrous
shortage of both bread and milk, the shortage of milk being
attributable to the fact that so many dairy cows were being
slaughtered for meat. On the black market, a South African
Rand cost Z$130 (Zimbabwe dollars) when he arrived on the
Monday; a few days later, the rate was Z$190, or roughly
Z$1900 to one US dollar. Although comparatively wealthy by
local standards, the Jewish community is finding itself in a
situation where even though it has the buying power, there is
increasingly nothing to buy.
At its height in the mid-1960s, the Zimbabwe Jewish community
comprised over 9000 souls and was Sub-Saharan Africa's only
substantial Jewish presence after South Africa. Today, only
between 650 and 700 remain, almost all located in Harare
(345) and Bulawayo (225). The average age is over sixty, with
only four weddings having taken place in the last decade. Age
is a major reason why many Jewish Zimbabweans have chosen to
remain and try to sit out the crisis, although others are
effectively prisoners to their funds, which they would be
unable to take with them were they to emigrate.
Despite the mounting crisis, the community continues to keep
its institutions running. There are two synagogues in Harare,
the Harare Hebrew Congregation (where Mincha-Maariv takes
place daily) and the Sephardi Congregation of Harare, and one
in Bulawayo and a well-maintained Jewish aged home.
The two main urban centers each even have a "Jewish" day
school, Sharon School in Harare and Carmel in Bulawayo, where
kashrus is maintained, Hebrew is compulsory and all the
yomim tovim observed. However, at both schools Jewish
pupils are today a small minority. At Sharon, there are 30
(out of a total of 186) and at Carmel only 11 out of 146.
Much of the work of the Zimbabwe Board of Deputies has
involved restoring the Jewish cemeteries in the other urban
centers and country districts, where there has long ceased to
be a Jewish presence.
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