King David at 70: the legacy

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

King David is not just a path to educating our children, it’s the very fabric of the Johannesburg Jewish community, past and present. And, it all started in 1948.

“The founding of King David coincided with the founding of Israel,” says Elliot Wolf, the Director of the King David Schools Foundation, and former principal of King David High School Linksfield.

Though underpinned by Zionist foundations, King David’s beginnings were somewhat controversial. “It was just three years after World War II, and world Jewry was still very conscious of the Holocaust and all aspects of being separated and living in ghettos,” says Elliot. As a result, there was much opposition to the idea of establishing a Jewish day school in Johannesburg and of separating Jewish children from the mainstream.

“King David’s founding was to the credit of people like Solly Yellin and Louis Sachs, in particular, who were absolutely passionate about the idea of establishing a Jewish day school,” says Elliot.

Starting with just seven children in Grade 1 and Grade 2, King David opened in Yeoville in an old, double storey, semi-detached house. The school moved to its current Linksfield premises shortly afterwards.

Having secured a home for the primary school, King David’s founders worked to acquire more of the surrounding property for the future high school. But first, Sachs had to convince the owner of Vrede Hoek, a beautiful Cape Dutch house on the property, to sell the house and surrounding land.

“It belonged to the Marks, a Jewish couple,” says Elliot. “Mr Marks had died, and Mrs Marks was living there on her own. She’d become a bit of a recluse, and the house was like a museum.”

After Sachs badgered her for almost two years, she eventually succumbed, and sold the house and, as Louis Sachs described it, “G-d’s precious 14 acres”. On this land, they built King David Linksfield High School, which opened in 1955. Vrede Hoek still serves as the school’s administration block.

When it came to choosing a name for the school, it was Johannesburg’s illustrious King Edward VII School – now known as KES – that served as inspiration.

In 1960, seeing the need for a King David school in the western suburbs, King David Primary School Victory Park opened. “Linksfield catered for the north east of Johannesburg, and there was a feeling that since there was quite a sizeable Jewish community living in Emmarentia, Greenside, and Victory Park itself, which was then quite a new suburb, there would be enough people to establish a school,” says Jeffrey Wolf, Elliot’s twin brother, and the former principal of King David High School Victory Park.

Sachs was chairman of the board at the time. He was able to procure an area in Victory Park which had been a peach farm, and establish the school there. They started with a primary school and then the high school was established in 1964 under Eddie Tannenbaum. He had been vice-principal at King David Linksfield, and then became the first headmaster at King David High School Victory Park. Jeffrey followed.

“When I came to Victory Park, it was pretty small, but I was proud to see it grow enormously in the almost 30 years that I was there,” says Jeffrey. “I consider Victory Park my magnum opus, my big task. My years there were very happy, they were golden years in my career. I’m very proud of what we achieved. The school stood for the same things as Linksfield, and being run by twin headmasters, I suppose our approach was very much the same.

“The great beauty of Victory Park was that in being a smaller school, there was a greater chance for children to be seen and recognised as individuals. It had a more personal and familial feel than a much bigger school. I think that was our great appeal.”

King David is now the largest Jewish school network in the southern hemisphere, with 11 schools, ranging from nursery to high. These are found across five different Johannesburg campuses – King David Linksfield; King David Victory Park; King David Sandton; Minnie Bersohn Pre-Primary School; and King David Rosabelle Klein Nursery School, Waverley.

King David Ariel, the first Jewish remedial school in Johannesburg, opened on the Victory Park campus this year. In total, King David schools have about 3 300 students and 300 teachers.

Considering its beginnings, King David’s growth has been phenomenal.

Innumerable stories filled with memorable characters, too many to name, are all part of the King David legacy. Among the primary school’s legendary principals was the late Barney Meyers, who started as vice-principal of King David Primary Linksfield, and later became principal of King David Primary Victory Park, where he remained for 24 years. Known for his motto, “mens sana in corpore sano” (a healthy mind in a healthy body), he was considered a mensch by all who knew him.

King David High School Linksfield’s first principal, Norman Sandler, led the high school for its first 19 years. An anecdote Sandler himself used to share, was his unfortunate slip of the tongue at the opening of the new high school hall in 1968. “Sachs had wonderful contacts in Israel,” recalls Elliot.

“He had invited Gideon Hausner, who was the judge at the Adolf Eichmann trial, to be our guest speaker at the opening of the hall. At the opening, Sandler was sitting next to Sachs, and they hadn’t decided beforehand who would introduce Hausner. So they were having a bit of an altercation about who should be accorded this honour. Sandler ultimately prevailed, and likely a bit ruffled by the preceding discussion, stood up to make the introduction.

“’Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘It gives me great pleasure to welcome our guest speaker – Mr Adolf Eichmann.’ The whole hall laughed, and he corrected himself. It’s one of those incidents I’ll never forget!”

Also in 1968, Sandler initiated what would become the school’s Wolf legacy by appointing identical twins, Elliot and Jeffrey, as teachers. Elliot had been working at Parktown Boys’ High School for ten years at this stage.

“Mr Sandler was looking for a new Latin teacher, and had heard about me,” says Elliot. “I was in London on long leave when I received a very wordy letter from him – Mr Sandler used to love long sounding words – offering me a position at King David.”

Eventually the two met for an interview, and Elliot mentioned his brother Jeffrey, an English teacher who had recently married and could do with a salary increase. “So Mr Sandler said, ‘I’ll have you both’,” recalls Elliot.

“We came to King David Linksfield together, Jeffrey as head of English, and I as head of Latin. Then they seconded Jeffrey in 1969 as vice-principal of King David Victory Park. I was appointed deputy principal at Linksfield in 1969, and I became headmaster here in 1974 when Sandler retired.

In 1975, Jeffrey was made headmaster of Victory Park, and so the cycle began. Elliot retired as Linksfield’s principal in 2001 after 28 years, while Jeffrey retired from Victory Park in 1998.

Elliot’s King David story – which is not over yet – is a definitive part of the massive history of King David, for which seventy years is clearly just the beginning.