A Lost Tribe: Russian-speaking Jews in South Africa Today

Download or read book A Lost Tribe: Russian-speaking Jews in South Africa Today written by Boris Gorelik and published by Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a group of Jews in South Africa that has been almost overlooked by local Jewish organisations. In fact they are not even viewed as an entity, but rather as an aggregate of individuals whose number is unknown. These are the Russian-speaking Jews from the former Soviet Union- South African Jewry's 'lost tribe'. Unlike Israel, Germany or the United States, South Africa did not experience the influx of hundreds of thousands of Soviet and post-Soviet Jews in the 1970s to 1990s. That is probably a reason why neither researchers nor journalists has ever considered them as a South African phenomenon. In addition, unlike those Jews from the ex-USSR in Israel, Germany or the United States, in South Africa they have not formed their own communities and do not play a prominent part in the existing ones. In fact, they usually appear to be unwilling to involve themselves with South African Jewish organisations. They keep their distance and are not as religious or Zionist as their locally-born counterparts and are generally not community oriented. To some observers they may even appear to be more Russian than Jewish. Generally speaking, ex-USSR emigres are not clearly bound to their Jewish identity. They might be Jews but do they manifest any 'Jewishness'?