Serving the natives: Whiteness as the price of hospitality in South African Yiddish literature

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 505-521

  Sherman, Joseph ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND   (South Africa)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNICITY; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; IMMIGRANT POPULATION; RACISM;

SOUTH AFRICA;

EID: 0033736353     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/713683588     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. This law is cited in C. Saunders (ed), The Illustrated History of South Africa (Cape Town, Reader's Digest, 1992), p. 200.
2. Throughout this paper I consciously employ this phrase, rather than the bland generic term 'society', to call attention to the fact that, particularly in South Africa, the social order was -and continues to be -in a constant state of flux. As my argument seeks to demonstrate, the South African social order has always been in the process of forming and re-forming itself.
3. Cited in D.M. Titleslad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand 1902-1979' (MA dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 1991), p. 135.
4. C. van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper (Cape Town, David Philip, 1996), p. 275.
5. Cited in Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', p. 135.
6. Since all identities are fluid, the radical experience of identity transformation I am examining here was felt equally by people flooding into the city who spoke Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana and Afrikaans, for example, all of whom were ultimately slotted into very different racial and class categories. Similarly, immigrants to South Africa from the UK - English, Scots, Welsh and Irish - also had their cultural differences erased in a process that made them part of an artificially constructed entity labelled 'white' and 'English speaking'. The entire process was played out along a continuously shifting frontier.
7. These statistics are extrapolated from demographic tables and comments on them supplied in T. Adler, 'The Johannesburg Jewish Workers' Club', Journal of Southern African Studies, 6, 1 (October 1979), pp. 71-74.
8. In his detailed study, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand, 1903-1979', Titlestad establishes that 'from 1903 to 1940 Jewish levels of participation in the trade fluctuated between 54 and 82 percent of all licensed eating-house keepers on the Witwatersrand' (p. 137). In the course of his research Titlestad became aware that official archival records on the Reef effectively 'camouflage' information after 1933-1934 when, for the purposes of municipal licensing, the special category of 'eating-houses' was subsumed into the more sweeping category of 'general dealer'. In a search for more specific documentation, Titlestad then discovered that all the key papers formerly in the possession of the Jewish Ben Weinbren, General Secretary and founder - in 1931 - of the Concession Stores and Allied Trades Assistants Union, were '[re]grettably ... destroyed by his family after his death in 1964' (pp. 5-6). In attempting to augment his source materials, Titlestad consequently sought oral histories either from surviving eatniks or from their adult children. Of the 36 interviews he conducted, only eighteen of those canvassed agreed to the disclosure of their names. Despite the overwhelming preponderance of Jews in the trade, of these eighteen, only six of those listed have obvious and identifiable Jewish surnames (p. 179).
9. See, for instance, the remarkable study by L.C. Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994).
10. H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York, Routledge, 1994, repr. 1997), p. 13.
11. The translations of the short stories from which the English quotations that follow are taken are all collected in my volume of South African Yiddish stories in English translation. See J. Sherman (trans. and ed), From a Land Far Off: South African Yiddish Stories in English Translation(Capc Town, Jewish Publications-South Africa, 1987). The published sources of the original Yiddish texts are cited individually as each story is first referred to.
12. R. Feldman, 'Gold un diamantn', in Shvarts un vays (Vilna, 1935; republished New York, Cyco, 1957), pp. 125-136. English translation, 'Gold and Diamonds', in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, p. 75.
13. R. Feldman, 'Gold un diamantn', in Shvarts un vays (Vilna, 1935; republished New York, Cyco, 1957), pp. 125-136. English translation, 'Gold and Diamonds', in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, p. 75.
14. Ibid.
15. Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', p. 27.
16. Feldman, 'Gold and Diamonds', p. 75.
17. Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', p. 25.
18. Feldman, 'Gold and Diamonds', p. 75.
19. Sh. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', in Dorem-afrikaner zamlbukh (Johannesburg, Literarishn krayz, 1945), pp. 56-71. English translation, 'Berch', in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, pp. 108-124.
20. Sh. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', in Dorem-afrikaner zamlbukh (Johannesburg, Literarishn krayz, 1945), pp. 56-71. English translation, 'Berch', in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, pp. 108-124.
21. yeshive [yeshivah]: A Talmudic college for unmarried male students between the ages of fourteen and their early twenties. Here, and throughout this paper, I romanise the Hebrew word according to its Ashkenazi pronunciation; the more familiar modern Hebrew ('Sephardi') pronunciation is given in square brackets.
22. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', pp. 118-119.
23. Feldman, 'Gold and Diamonds', pp. 75-76.
24. D. Jacobson, 'Foreword', in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, p. xiii.
25. M. Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble, with the assistance of Joshua Fishman (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 193ff.
26. Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', p. 101.
27. Jacobson, 'Foreword', p. xi.
28. Cited in Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', p. 61.
29. Ibid., p. 7.
30. M. Tabatznik, 'In a pey-dey in kaferita', in Sh. Rozhansky (ed), Musterverk fun der yidisher-literatur: Dorem-afrikanish, Vol. 50 (Buenos Aires, Yivo, 1971), pp. 147-158. Translated into English as 'Eating-House Payday' in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, pp. 161-166.
31. M. Tabatznik, 'In a pey-dey in kaferita', in Sh. Rozhansky (ed), Musterverk fun der yidisher-literatur: Dorem-afrikanish, Vol. 50 (Buenos Aires, Yivo, 1971), pp. 147-158. Translated into English as 'Eating-House Payday' in Sherman, From a Land Far Off, pp. 161-166.
32. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', p. 163.
33. On the participation of Yugoslavs in the eating-house trade, see Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', pp. 151-159.
34. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', p. 113.
35. Ibid., p. 111.
36. Ibid., p. 114.
37. Cited in Titlestad, 'Eating-Houses on the Witwatersrand', p. 60.
38. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', p. 118.
39. Ibid., p. 120.
40. Ibid., pp. 122-123.
41. Ibid., p. 112.
42. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', p. 164.
43. Ibid., p. 165.
44. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', p. 122.
45. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', p. 162.
46. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', p. 114.
47. Ibid., pp. 111-112.
48. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', p. 161.
49. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', p. 109.
50. Ibid.
51. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', pp. 164-165.
52. Ibid., p. 165.
53. Ibid., p. 162.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., pp. 165-166.
56. Landsman (Yiddish): a Jew born and raised in the same part of Eastern Europe as oneself.
57. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', pp. 115-116.
58. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', pp. 165-166.
59. Feldman, 'Gold and Diamonds', p. 74.
60. Leibowitz, 'Bereh', p. 110.
61. Ibid., p. 108.
62. Ibid., p. 110.
63. Ibid., p. 109.
64. Ibid., p. 112.
65. Ibid., p. 109.
66. Ibid., p. 117.
67. Ibid., p. 113.
68. Ibid., p. 111.
69. Ibid., p. 114.
70. Ibid., p. 119.
71. Ibid., pp. 120-121. Rosheshone [Rosh ha-Shanah] (Hebrew: literally, 'beginning of the year'). This is the first of the High Holy Days, ushering in the Ten Days of Penitence that culminate with Yonkiper [Yom Kippur], the Day of Atonement. These are the holiest days in the Jewish liturgical year.
72. Ibid., p. 120.
73. Ibid., p. 119.
74. Ibid., p. 111.
75. Ibid., p. 121.
76. Ibid., p. 109.
77. Ibid., p. 110.
78. Ibid., p. 118.
79. Kapores [kapparot] (Hebrew: 'atonements'): a Jewish custom dating from medieval times, it introduced the slaughtering of a hen or cockerel prior to the start of Yom Kippur as a vicarious act of atonement by an individual. The slaughtered fowl were the kapparot, or 'atonements'. In modern times this archaic ritual has been replaced by the giving of money to the poor.
80. Ibid., p. 121.
81. Ibid., p. 121.
82. Since Bereh's boss recites only the Kiddush from the Siddur, the Daily Prayer Book, he too is only paying token lip service to the religious significance of the Festival of Passover. Orthodox ritual observance obligates the recitation of the whole of the Haggadah, the story of the redemption from Egypt. This recitation is the sole liturgical and spiritual purpose of the Seder (Hebrew: 'order'), where each person present is required to regard himself as having been personally redeemed from slavery. In their different ways, therefore, Bereh and his boss are equally far removed from any engagement with the tenets of their faith and the prerequisites of their peoplehood.
83. Ibid., p. 117.
84. Ibid., p. 118.
85. Ibid., pp. 116-117.
86. Tabatznik, 'Eating-House Payday', pp. 165-166.
87. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, p. 113.