A South African Jew in Britain

I lived the first three decades of my life as a privileged white person in South Africa before emigrating to Britain in 1970. The change from living in a country governed by white racists to one built on democratic foundations, however flawed, was refreshing and I never looked back. In South Africa there had been an undercurrent of antisemitism dating at least back to the Anglo-Boer War, but half a century later, when the threat of an apocalyptic clash between whites and blacks loomed, the dominant white Afrikaner nationalists concluded that it was more important to unify all whites, irrespective of their religious, national or ethnic origins, than to continue beating the antisemitic drum.

In that racially segregated world, Jews tended to mix with Jews. The Jewish community prospered and Jewish cultural life flourished. Liberal-minded Jews played a prominent part in the struggle against apartheid, incurring accusations of treason in the process, while other Jews distanced themselves from South Africa’s internal conflicts and concentrated instead on assisting in the post-Holocaust regeneration of the Jewish people by supporting the newly emergent State of Israel. I followed the latter stream.

Meanwhile, inside the apartheid bubble, I pursued my professional training. At a liberal university I drew inspiration from those who refused to condone the brutality being meted out to blacks on a daily basis. Nor could I accept the laws which denied blacks the opportunity to raise their educational level and improve their economic status and which, in effect, consigned them to a life of perpetual degradation. But I was no warrior on that battlefield. I knew that my future lay elsewhere, and Britain, with its democratic traditions and its Anglophone culture, won out over Israel, although I never lost my Zionist sympathies.

After the heat and noise of South Africa, life in Britain felt strangely muted. I came to see British reserve as both respect for my personal privacy and reluctance to be confrontational. In my contacts with non-Jews, my Jewish identity hardly seemed to matter. If anything, my foreignness was located in my South Africanness and seen as a source of pride. Antisemitism lurked on the fringes of society, hinted at only through veiled allusions to prominent Jewish politicians and intellectuals but seldom made explicit.

British Jews, unlike their South African counterparts, seemed at pains to conceal their Jewish identity. Family names had often been changed, suggesting a fear of disclosing a Russian, German or East European origin. Like the Marranos of Spain and Portugal, they retained a vibrant inner religious life. The general idea seemed to be to keep one’s head down and avoid drawing attention to the Jewish community as a whole. The religious strain was more discernible than the Zionist strain but both pulsated strongly in the heart of British Jewry.

Recently, the worldwide surge in antisemitism, brought on, ironically, by the Hamas attack on Israel, has affected Britain as much as it has many other so-called enlightened countries. I can only conclude, sadly, that antisemitism will always be with us, submerged, like a crocodile beneath the surface of a river, waiting for its moment to rise up and snatch its prey. Given the ubiquitous nature of the beast, I have never regretted my decision to make my home in Britain, a country in which I am able to lead a fulfilled life while at the same time retaining my identification with the Jewish people.