The best little Jewish school in Johannesburg

The quote, usually attributed to Dr Seuss, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” has encouraged us to focus on the joy and the memories we have of our association with King David Victory Park (KDVP), which began in the very early days of the high school. For the two of us, closure of this school, however realistically justified, is a very sad day. We gave our hearts and souls to nourish it through its toddler and adolescent years, and witnessed its adulthood, where it stood tall, respected, and admired as “the best little Jewish school in Johannesburg”.

It’s the memories of our more than three decades of devoted association with the school that will sustain us now. We remember the stalwart, pioneering parents, and pupils who willingly forsook a day in their surgeries, their law offices, or their businesses to spend a day laying out the school gardens. We remember the erection of the school hall and the auditorium which followed, both through the generosity of parents of the school. We remember the Victory Park Synagogue being built on our school grounds to serve both the school and the Victory Park community. One of our special memories is of the year that our beautiful sports pavilion was donated by the husband and sons of the late Sandra Lotzoff.

However, our memories are not only of the buildings at the school, but rather the many long serving, highly motivated staff, the supportive parents and, more importantly, their children whom they entrusted to our care. We offered them a home from home and ensured their identity by knowing the name of every individual student and, in most cases, “their personality, strength, virtue, and vice”. We always rejoiced at their extraordinary successes in athletics, swimming, chess, table tennis, debating, drama, in the science fair, the Bible and Zionist quizzes, the business game, and in public speaking. We couldn’t help being swept up into their excitement about the matric dance, the fashion show, and the annual musical productions. We celebrated or commemorated with them all the chagim – Purim was our least favourite as the students, of course, took advantage to make as much noise as possible! With all this and their daily attendance at shul, they were strongly identified Judaically and Zionistically.

In the 1970s and 1980s we had the privilege of leading a group of Grade 10 students of King David and other Jewish schools on four ulpanim in Israel. In the three months, we saw Israel through their young and enthusiastic eyes, but it also gave us and the ulpaniks the opportunity to know one another on a different level. Traveller’s cheques flying out of the bus window; coins to be retrieved from the stomach of an ulpanik; two broken arms on the same ulpanik, who refused to go home – all had to be handled calmly. The ulpan today is non-existent, but in the minds of many, it remains their best school experience.

We remember, too, with great sadness standing at the graveside of the many pupils, parents, and staff, who had passed away too soon.

The school buildings will always be bricks and mortar, but from the many messages of consolation we have received from around the world, we know that they have appreciated all that we and our highly motivated staff strived hard to give them. We motivated them to be the best that they could be; we challenged them; we disciplined them; we equipped them to think differently, to speak their minds; and we sent them into the world with a real sense of Jewish and communal identity. Our own children’s school journey began at the wonderful Rose Gordon Nursery School, followed by the primary school under the legendary, late Barney Meyers, and then our own high school. Our grandchildren have also benefitted from the KDVP system

Although we have had to accept the impermanence of things, we remain bereft in knowing that there will be no future Victory Parkers. However, in following the life journey of many of them, we know that they have excelled wherever they are in the world. For you see, “they did not just pass through King David, King David, and all that it stood for passed through them”, as one of our head boys so cleverly observed .

• Jeffrey Wolf was the deputy head of King David High School Victory Park from 1969 to 1974, and became headmaster in 1975 until 1998. Barbara Wolf was the supervisor of the modified stream from 1970 to 1997, and then deputy head from 1998 to 2000.