Durbanites are like magnets no matter where in the world

Bermuda may be thousands of kilometres away, but for two former Durbanites at a recent concert, “home” suddenly felt remarkably close. 

A chance meeting between Warren Bank and Deena Weiss at the Bermuda Chamber Music Festival quickly turned into a game of Jewish geography as they discovered their shared roots in Durban, swapping familiar names, places, and memories from the community they’d both once called home. 

For Bank, the encounter was another reminder of a phenomenon he’s experienced across the world: there is something about Durbanites that draws them together, wherever they end up. 

His connection with Weiss was almost immediate. Despite meeting thousands of kilometres from South Africa, the pair soon realised that their lives overlapped in unexpected ways, from the people they knew to their experiences growing up in Durban’s Jewish community. 

“I was late getting to the concert, so I quickly found a seat on a bench, squeezed in, and the concert went ahead. At the interval, I was talking to my friend Anne when the woman sitting in front of me turned around and asked, ‘Excuse me, are you South African?’ I said yes, and when I told her I was from Durban, she said, ‘Gosh, I was born in Durban.’ I asked where she had lived, and she said, ‘In Berea.’ Being from Durban, I immediately corrected her: in Durban it’s ‘on the Berea’, not ‘in Berea’,” Bank said. 

“She told me she had lived on Windmill Road. The only person I remembered living there was Rabbi Weiss, but at that point, I had no idea she was Jewish. She then mentioned that Seventh-day Adventist missionaries used to knock on their door,” he said, “I told her that Durban’s Great Synagogue was just down the road from the church, and that I happened to be Jewish and had celebrated my Barmitzvah there. She just stared at me and said, ‘My father was the rabbi of that synagogue.’ 

“It was just the craziest coincidence. I didn’t have to go to that concert, and Deena and her husband, who live in Jerusalem, didn’t have to be in Bermuda. Yet somehow, we ended up sitting right next to each other.” 

Bank, a barrister, moved from the United Kingdom (UK) to Bermuda during the COVID-19 pandemic after being offered an opportunity to pursue a different area of law. There, he became involved in strengthening the island’s small Jewish community. Despite strict work-permit regulations and initial opposition to bringing a rabbi to Bermuda, the community successfully appealed the decision, and the rabbi has since helped expand Jewish life on the island through communal meals, holiday gatherings, and other programmes. 

Bank had lived in South Africa until 2015, but the Weiss family had left in the 1970s. 

“It’s not like we told each other our entire life stories, but we caught up. I remembered that her sister, Chana, had been in my year, and Deena told me where she was now and about her family. She told me that she lives in Jerusalem and that she and her husband love to travel. We wanted to stay in touch, so I got her husband’s number, and we have remained in contact ever since,” said Bank. 

“After I shared the story on the Facebook group Durban Calling, several of Dina’s old school friends came out of the woodwork and contacted me privately, asking if I could put them back in touch with her,” he said. 

“Besides being a lawyer here, I feel that part of my mission in life is bringing people together. I love being able to reconnect people in this way, and I’m thrilled that, through this extraordinary bit of divine providence, I was able to do that.” 

This is not the first such connection he’s made so far from home. 

“Capetonians are friendly with each other, and in Joburg, you might be close to people who grew up in the same area as you. But Durban has this perfect Goldilocks mix. We all went to the same schools, sometimes from the age of three or six, or from high school, so we all know each other and almost see each other as family. 

“That connection exists between Durbanites all over the world. Wherever I go, I seem to have friends from Durban. I was in California for the first time in May, travelling from Berkeley and San Francisco to Irvine and La Jolla, and I was surrounded by old school friends.” 

He said the Durban connection has remained strong across the world, with old friends meeting up in places such as Israel and the UK and forming what he described as an “enormous little family of ex-Durbanites”. Even though he and his classmates matriculated about 40 years ago, they remain in regular contact and continue to be closely involved in one another’s lives. 

“Even though the Durban we grew up in doesn’t really exist anymore – the school is no longer there, and the Jewish community has become much smaller – it was the most incredible place to grow up,” Bank said. 

“I think that Durban lives on in our hearts and in the relationships we’ve managed to maintain over decades. It takes effort to keep those connections alive, but for me it doesn’t feel like an effort. I do it naturally because I love my friends so much.”