Moshe Silberhaft: 25 years as the travelling rabbi

DAVID SAKS

That year, he was one of a number of Yeshiva College student volunteers who officiated at festival services in small rural communities around the country. Thereafter, until he finished school, he continued to officiate at the Messina high holiday services.

In 1993, following yeshiva study in Israel, and two years as a military chaplain on the Namibia-Angola border, he took up the position of spiritual leader to South African country communities. In doing so, he became the seventh in a line of rabbis and reverends to hold that position since the establishment of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies’ (SAJBD’s) country communities department in 1949. Over time, he would impress his unique stamp on the work of his department in a way that would distinguish him from his predecessors.

Both inside South Africa, as well as in the small and even more isolated pockets of Jewry in various sub-Saharan African countries, Silberhaft became known as “the travelling rabbi”. He has become the public face of the Jewish world and the link between the mainstream community in the large urban centres and those still living in smaller rural towns and hamlets around the country.

For many lonely and usually elderly country Jewish residents he is one of the few —if not the only — remaining links they have with their people and heritage.

In spite of the many long and lonely hours of constant travel to every corner of South Africa and beyond, Silberhaft continues to be as highly motivated as he was when he first stepped into the position. 

“When people ask what motivates me after 25 years of touring the length and breadth of Southern Africa, I can honestly assure them that, irrespective of the difficulties, every tour I undertake is a new experience that brings unique challenges. At no point have I experienced a loss of motivation or enthusiasm. A particular person, smile, handshake, gesture, joke, story, or memory along the way renews my positive energy to serve,” he says.

This year marks 25 years of Silberhaft’s services to South African country communities. During this time, he has been involved in the official closure and winding up of a number of rural congregations, among them Pietersburg, Bethlehem, Bethal, and Potchefstroom. He has also assisted in the unexpected revival of one (Hermanus), and the establishment of a new community in Plettenberg Bay.

Inevitably, the nature of his work has changed over the years. With rare exceptions, there are today no longer any small-town communities as such, but rather a scattering of mainly elderly individuals whom he visits and assists as required. Organising volunteer officiants for the high holiday festival services continues to be part of his department’s brief.

However, a great deal of time and resources are now devoted to ensuring the maintenance of the more than 20 000 graves in more than 220 Jewish cemeteries countrywide. In the absence of local Jews to look after them, the cemeteries have become vulnerable to natural deterioration and vandalism (often, but not always, motivated by anti-Semitism). In a number of cases, squatters have moved in, occupying the abandoned tahara (cleansing) houses, and sometimes tombstones have been removed and used for building materials. Under Rabbi Silberhaft, the practice of laying tombstones flat in a bed of concrete has been widely adopted to prevent future vandalism.

Another important function of his department is, wherever possible, to preserve and document the heritage of country Jewish life. This Silberhaft would do through the mounting of memorial plaques on noteworthy historical sites, and ensuring that written records and remaining artefacts are transferred to the board’s archives for safekeeping.

Most recently, Silberhaft was involved in the restoration of the “smouse” monument outside Graaff-Reinet, which uniquely commemorates the pioneering role itinerant Jewish pedlars played in developing the rural economy.  

Most South African Jews today live in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, with smaller concentrations in Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, and East London. Outside of those centres, Silberhaft estimates that perhaps 1 400 still remain, ranging from one or two individuals in a particular small town through to those living in relative growth areas like the southern Cape coast. In that area, there has been an increase in the number of Jewish residents, resulting in the establishment of the Southern Cape Jewish Association about 10 years ago.

Silberhaft has a rich range of anecdotes about his experiences over the past quarter-century, and the many unique and interesting characters he has met — people of a type all but unknown to the average Johannesburg or Cape Town shul-goer.

One was Miriam Dreitzer, who, notwithstanding her conversion to Judaism, retained the doggedly independent, ultra-conservative attitudes of her rural Afrikaans background. She and her son, Gregory, were eking out a living on their derelict farm near the Lesotho border when Silberhaft discovered them, and began visiting and assisting them. After Gregory’s death, Miriam’s behaviour became increasingly erratic, to the point that she began shooting at anyone (including police) who strayed into her vicinity. In the end, not without much persuasion on his part, the rabbi arranged for her to move to a retirement home in Bloemfontein. 

In Mafeking in the tense months leading up to SA’s first democratic elections in 1994, deadly clashes took place between opponents of Lucas Mangope’s regime in Bophuthatswana and his Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) supporters. Silberhaft found himself cold-shouldered by the local black population, but discovered that this was because any strange white man with a beard was suspected of being an AWB member, and treated accordingly.

Many of those Silberhaft comes into contact with, while not being Jewish themselves, have had a connection with the local Jewish community. He once met an Ermelo resident who looks after the Jewish cemetery who, having never met a rabbi before, asked nervously whether Silberhaft wanted to circumcise him. 

These and many more such anecdotes appear in Silberhaft’s 2012 book The Travelling Rabbi – My African Tribe, written in collaboration with veteran journalist and editor Suzanne Belling, who accompanied him on many of his visits when she was executive director of the SAJBD Cape Council.

Rabbi Silberhaft acknowledges that, in all likelihood, the day will come when only the cemeteries will remain in the towns which he visits. Until then, however, there is still a great deal for him to do.   

“For nearly seven decades, it has been our job to keep a watchful eye out for those who have, perhaps, been left behind in the headlong rush to the cities, or to overseas destinations where much of our once strong community now lives,” he remarks.

“No matter where they might be, however, Jews the world over need rabbis — to circumcise their sons and prepare them for their Barmitzvah portions, to marry them, and, heaven forbid, to bury them. And all this in a Jewish way.”