Alexander and Gruzd

Many wonderful friends and colleagues have written about Steve’s brilliant career and the impact he made in the world in the last decades of his amazing life. I hope the tributes keep rolling in, he deserves every one and more than that. 

In my mind I go back to Joburg, 1985. It was the first day of high school at King Edward VII School (KES), we were in Form 1D and Mr Moffat was explaining something geographical. He had instructed us not to take down any notes from the board until he was finished talking. Steve was sitting at the desk next to me and was already writing down the notes. Mr Moffat kept speaking, walked up the row, and flat handed Steve on the back with a loud whack! I (who had come over from HA Jack Primary, Steve from Houghton Primary) was not used to such violence and went up to him after class to introduce myself and see how he was. He said he was “Steven Gruzd, which rhymes with ‘Bruised’” and a friendship started that day that became “Alexander and Gruzd” for five years at KES, and 40 years since. We were two Jewish nerds trying to navigate and make sense of 1980s Joburg, a time of privilege in a strictly-controlled society. 

KES debating and public speaking team 1989.

We read, sang, watched sport and British movies on badly recorded VHS tapes from the UK, and played games. Many games. Mostly language games. We sat together in most classes and if a teacher was less than engaging, we hid a notepad under the desk and played word games, made up crossword puzzles, invented languages, jokes, songs or limericks, maths problems, or played cards. Klabberjas was a favourite, and being a Jewish minority in need of four, we taught it to our not-Jewish classmates and then played for money. This was a lucrative source of tuckshop funds in the first years until they became as competitive as we were and got their own back. 

At a school that worshipped rugby, we both played enthusiastically but achieved in other fields. Not many people knew that he had the fastest acceleration in the grade – it wasn’t sustained for long, but for the first 20 metres he was blitzvinnig. We called him Caterpillar after the missile, not the bug. He was also Gruzzy Bear, which became Bear or “The Bear”. 

We went to Ellis Park and Wanderers together, as well as watching hours of anything sport-worthy on TV. I would walk up to his house in Isipingo Street, Bellevue after school in the afternoon before catching the number 10 bus back down Louis Botha Avenue. 

Steve Gruzd and Greg Alexander at Lords Cricket grounds inJun95

For our birthdays we tried to find the most useless gifts possible. I got him ugly socks and ties and he responded with the book More South African Deep Freezing by Alice Theron, which was hands down a winner. 

We gravitated to the English and History teachers at KES, and the debating and dramatics society. Steve was a phenomenal speaker, with a wicked sense of humour. He could have halls in stitches of laughter. Our debating and public speaking team was unbeaten and won not only the local debating league but also the national public speaking trophy in our matric year. 

Our lives changed dramatically at the end of our first year at school when I persuaded Steve to come to this camp in Pringle Bay (December 1985) – and so began his years of involvement with Netzer Maginim. Anyone who has been deeply involved in a youth movement knows how this impacts your life, how your chevreh become the family you choose, and we are fortunate to have a friendship group that has stayed together all this time despite being spread across the world. 

Machaneh in Pringle Bay was paradise: youth led by youth, a place to find out who you were, have your mind expanded not by substances but by people’s words. Leaders were just a few years older than we were, old enough to seem worldly but young enough to be relatable. It was a place where silly was allowed. More than that, silly was expected and respected, and Steve was a master of silly. Crazy characters, crazy dress, funny faces, songs and chants, tongue tricks. Monty Python featured heavily. Steve and I committed the whole of The Life of Brian to heart and recited it or performed it constantly. 

At the end of matric, Steve went on Shnat Netzer with three of our chevreh to spend the year in Israel studying and learning about the land and himself. He came back enthused and inspired, and spent the next few years in leadership of the movement with his passion and intelligence. 

The Netzer Maginim chevreh playing Klabberjas

It was at one of those Netzer Maginim camps that a young dancer, Mandy Lever, caught his attention and he was instantly smitten. At Steve and Mandy’s wedding, I gave the best man’s speech, with each of the paragraphs headed by a seven-letter word. I gave Steve the letters for each of them scrambled and he had to work out the word (if the word was “wedding”, I said “GNDIDWE”). Needless to say he guessed them all. 

If you look at photographs of Steve when he was happiest somewhere, some time, you will notice that he raises his hands wide and up to the sky. This was him happiest, open, smiling, loving life and where he was. Steve was that person – open, loving, generous, wide-hearted. It is beyond belief that someone could think to take this person out of this world, this gentle soul who only gave and gave. His soul will be bound in the bond of life. May his memory be an inspiration. 

• Rabbi Greg Alexander is part of the rabbinic team at the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation.